Sovera

Savage feels nice. Very fast recharges (using only the first three attacks) allows for T3, T1, T2, T1 rotation. But it's a DoT based set and it's not in a good coexistance with CoH's fast paced combat and low HP mobs like all DoT sets in all games. I remember playing WoW and accepting 1.5 GCD to cast a 16 second DoT would mean the mob had died before half of those 16 seconds had passed. With me this is how it felt in the later game flailing my arms and seemingly not doing damage to a mob until all the DoTs started ticking and their HP bar would plummet. But everything has its downsides and its upsides. Claws, for example, requires hitting with Follow-up for the boost and it is not uncommon to be debuffed to a point we cannot hit with it, but Savage has a traditional Build-Up power that allows to punch through and burst a pack of mobs down. This makes things like early Circle of Thorns and Council Vampyr easy for Savage and troublesome for Claws. The good news is that Savage plays well with Brutes especially in the low levels. Not so good news is that we usually ignore DoTs and keep on hitting the thing until it dies anyway. Its 'flailing' gets solved by Burn who hits hard and doubles as single target and AoE skill. Best news is that it is one of the only two sets in the melee arsenal that has two PbAoEs so we can do some lovely burst AoE on top of Burn. After those three have been used it is usually enough to have killed most things and be down to 3-4 mobs at which point just hitting the boss is enough while letting Burn take care of the others. You should not overthink too much in my opinion. Just make what seems fun.

Hits one guy? Explain. It only has an 8y radius but that's usually enough if all enemies are surrounding the character.

This is me on my Stone Armor. Handles great, levels great. Then for something that relies on defense it gets it shaved off in a few hits.

Not perfect, but leveling build. Once you start making money (I suggest sticking to the Ouroboros method in the guide in the signature to avoid outleveling a contact in the middle of an arc) start transitioning to the more expensive build.

This is the 'normal' build, but expensive for a new player (do check the guide in my signature and maybe pass italong to your family). Bit late to get started on it now but I'll post a cheaper build tomorrow morning.

Claws/Fire if you want to try something other what you mentioned though you might steal the thunder with tanking -and- damage soon as you reach 28, but thanks to Claws soon as you hit level 6. DM is fine if you like it, nothing is truly wrong (even bad sets like Kinetic Melee). EM is a beast but you need to reach 32 to get the last heavy hitter. My main is an EM/Fire with EM providing the ST and Fire Armor providing the AoE but Claws/Fire is my alt main since it examplars all the way down to the teens thanks to Claws. You can also look into Ice Melee since it has a forgiving early rotation and you can stretch your early squishyness a lot by planting an Ice Patch at every spawn. Rad Melee just needs Irradiated Ground filled with damage procs, but it's a much more slow pace and though Irradiated Ground is a beast it procs at random which is less nice than just opening with BU + an AoE to quickly neuter half a group. If you want to feel completely impervious (unlike Fire Armor that asks for the occasional inspiration) you can try Stone Armor. It's pretty sturdy though I found it squishy in the late game. Can't do Claws with it, but Rad Melee paired really well with it. For a new player I think Radiation Armor would have a lot of goodies like Radiation Therapy and a shield making it pretty durable (but still wanting the occasional inspiration).

Calm down, Snarks. It's a tiny drop of water and whomever is doing it must have come from WoW or something where this is a lot more common. Once they realize they are listing stacks of 10 at a time to make 100k profit but could be playing the game and earning 15 mill it tapers off. It's not the first time it has happened, and in any case anyone just playing the game comes out of a map with 5 million raw inf for five minutes. Paying 10k for salvage, eh.

Not to derail, but if aiming for Praetoria consider a Brute for that sweet sweet low level Fury. I speak as someone who was enthused about doing all Praetoria content on a Tanker and OMFG IT NEVER ENDS! I was way past level 25-ish and still had not gotten past the level 14 arcs. When I say I hadn't gotten past what I mean was that I had to scroll down to see them all 😛 Basically what I mean is that we get stuck in the low low levels for a long long time, ergo a combo that has an early start is quasi essential to keep one's sanity level in check. Fire Armor on a Tanker will help a lot because even exotic damage is no damage if hugging the floor. I did my tour of Praetoria on a Fire/Ice Melee Tanker but it was a slog which is why I mentioned the Brute with the benefit of that past experience. The problem with Praetoria is that the long slog keeps us on the cusp of level 20 (long list of level 14 arcs) which keeps us away from often important picks. Like Ice Melee not getting Ice Patch on a Tanker or Fire Armor not getting Consume on a Brute. Some are more important than others though (thanks to Recovery Serums we can live without Consume, but 50% of the reason of going Ice Melee is Ice Patch). So for a Brute I would recommend either: Claws: Claws is the usual with a boost to damage and accuracy from FU plus a quite strong Spin. Savage Melee: Savage has faster recharges allowing for T3, T1, T2, T1 in the low levels plus DoTs coupled with Fury at said low levels will destroy mobs. Ice: Ice will be safer since mobs debuff like mad and at such extreme low levels we cannot depend on our armor toggles. Frost comes super early too and is great. Rad Melee: Rad does come with a heal but it's not very useful. It's all mostly about Irradiated Ground passively irradiating anything close, but not all damage procs will be slottable right away plus it is a killer on low level endurance. Then pair whatever with Rad. Radiation Therapy trebles as small heal, endurance recovery, and damage if going the proc bomb route though we can't slot all the damage procs until level 27 but slotting three damage procs, two slots for heal and one slot for endurance recovery can be done by level 17 and RT is level 16 anyway. Something like . For a Tanker definitely Fire Armor. Once having reached Burn things become simple. Without Fury to prop things up something with an early AoE will be good. Claws only has FU at 20 though just for Spin it might still be worth it. I would suggest Dark Melee. Unconditional small early heal, decent cone even if not as good as Frost, and Siphon Life Shadpw Punch, Smite, shadow Punch will not be complicated to keep up. Problem with heals is that they rarely are useful. When we are debuffed our HP plummets and no heals will save us. It's mitigation and or kitting. Now, with all of this said it is important to stress that I was playing at 0x8 with the Tanker, so my 'omg it takes so long' has context. Playing at 0x1 there is no need to min max as hard, worry about debuffs, or worry about AoE so much.

The ease of the game would be my guess. It's like browsing the Tanker forums and so many posts about 'omg, this X/Y is so sturdy! I can tank everything with it!' and I'm just, yeah, you're a Tanker, it would be actually hard to die on a Tanker, actually have to try or make an effort to. Not putting down the above tester's enjoyment but it's probably the same. A scrapper able to wipe enemies at a decent clip? It does not really matter the flavor since they all can.

Masochists. Masochists the lot of you.

AoE is overrated in a team. Most any character has an AoE weak or otherwise and mobs are simply not built to withstand a full team unleashing AoE (most of the time backed by Build-ups and stuff). Even without Blasters launching their nukes a regular pack of mobs is reduced to half in the first seconds of combat. After that it's a matter of killing what's left and once only 3-4 enemies are left it's about ST. Most of the time people struggle to find a body they can land a few hits before it is killed.

Fire Melee on Scrappers gets its AoE at level 18 instead of 26. This is big for anyone who wants to solo because otherwise they only get lolFireBreath. Stone Melee on Tankers gets its AoE at 26 instead of 32 which, same as above thanks to the attempt at making Fault do damage having been botched. Martial Arts on Tankers gets its AoE at 20 instead of 26. All of the sets without an early AoE (Stone Melee, Super-Strength, etc) or weak AoE (Psi Melee, Dark Melee's AoE power firmly on a cone and weak ass on ToF, etc) can use Fire Armor's Burn to compensate since its obtained at level 18. Rad Armor also kind of does this with procbombing Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero but requires either a ton of global recharge or a secondary with places to slot Force Feedback procs making it more of a late game thing.

Overwhelming works fine though, or did when I tested. Probably because it works on a different mechanic. Burn's frontloaded damage is 60% if I recall. It's still a lot to miss out when the mobs run out but whatever makes the OP happy since they seem to be aiming for maximum crit they can get instead of gameplay use for the character.

Defs go Brute for Fire Armor. Nothing you will do will keep enemies on the burn patch which is, like, 70% of the reason to go Fire Armor.

In my experience the FF procs are enough to cover the Hasten gap. Especially in Shockwave since it hits multiple enemies. But the damage procs are a very valid approach because of the lack of clickies. Were you playing anything from Fire Armor to Dark or Rad I would insist in the FF procs to buff the uptime of your shields and heals. But SR has none of this. The AoEs have a small chance of the procs going off though. Easy to check by right clicking the power to lock it then hover the mouse over the damage (I apologize if this is too patronizingly explained but I never know the depth of experience people have with Mids so it's best to overexplain). Spin, for example, has a 33% chance of the fire damage going off (and the -res has, in my experience, no effect when having tested them in the Trapdoor challenge and only a minor difference in ST attacks against an AV/GM). The difference between Spin with damage procs as you had and no procs is 511 VS 456. Focus has 30% of the toxic proc going off (and toxic is one of the most resisted types of damage). Losing the damage proc for the FF one makes it go from 482 to 432. This is not about trying to change your mind and just more info to make a choice because sometimes we over value some things out of gut feels (don't get me started on the Trapdoor test, gut feels, and starting to time my runs to test them gut feels). In any case this is a big game of the min maxes because, honestly, if you fight enemies who can bypass your defense I'm not sure the extra resistance will prevents deaths anyway.

I luck out since I play EM/Fire Brute (AKA mobs don't run away from me :p). Burn fills up the gap in the rotation allowing for something like TF , ET, Burn, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher, Energy Punch, and repeat. Or was it TF, ET, Bone smasher, Burn, EP, BS? Been a while.

T To hit +3 enemies (because that is where we end once having the T3 alpha slotted) you are at 120-160% (cap is 95%). This is with one FU. Now disregard this if you actually fight +4 or even +5 enemies. You could slot ForceFeedback procs in Focus and Shockwave because everyone loves more speed, but on the other hand you do not have any sort of clickies (heals, endurance, build-up) other than Hasten so it might just be moot and just keep the damage procs in. You have some focus in reaching Fire/Cold resistances but that is not a commmon type of damage to find. S/L/E/N on the other hand are the bread and butter of CoH. So summarizing this is how I would go for it: - Ditched a bunch of recharge (Hasten was at 117 seconds and went up to 130) since you do not have clickies to worry. More recharge would mean less of a gap waiting for Follow-up but this is measure in split seconds (FU was at 3.11 and is now at 3.45. Still annoying lil gap since Slash + Focus take 2.8 seconds). In exchange pumped resists up. - Placed two FF procs to recoup the lost recharge. Strictly speaking? Not very needed because of not needing recharge. Exchange for damage procs if so desiring. - No longer need to have Weave toggled on for regular content (ITF, LGTF, etc). I did keep it and slotted for incarnate content (Tinpex, trials, etc) but honestly it is your build but decide if you would rather not just ditch Weave as well and distribute the slots around while taking any other power you care to (even Invisibility for a bit of extra stealth?). - Don't need Focused Accuracy on since one stack of FU already has everything at minimum 100% against +3 enemies. Because of endurance I would recommend not even toggling it unless in content where you'd want the extra accuracy (ITF and the roman +def shouts) or content where mobs debuff accuracy (CoT, Arachnos, Banished Pantheon, Tsoo, etc). Even without FA on Follow-up has a 91% to hit which goes to 120% with one stack. I am not a Claws/SR expert though so ring up @Bill Z Bubba.

Easily. Heck, it can be done with any of the resistance armors (Dark, Rad, Fire, etc).

You should post what your build will look like instead. For example you have four slots of LotG for the accuracy, but you also have Follow-up and Focused Accuracy that gives metric tons of accuracy so you've no need to chase those 9%. You have also (apparently) chased Fire/Cold bonuses which are not very important compared to Smash/Lethal or Energy/Negative. But since these may actually just be from the temporary slotting I do not want to go too in-depth. Keep in mind your purples won't be wasted if you do buy them, you can just toss them to your next alt. Or even sell them back.

Just remember if you pick Stone Armor, Ice Armor, or Invuln you don't need those since their heals will already cap your HP. You may still want the endurance ones though.

I vaguely recall Scrappers get twice the Energy Focus needed for a fast ET if they crit with ET, or was it TF? If so yeah, sure. I wouldn't use 2.9 second ET otherwise, but it's a personal opinion and not min maxed math.

Yep. For 20 seconds. The heavier the attack the more the fire damage boost. So, yeah... Energy Melee...? Ow.

The fire attack boosting tripped me up as well since I remembered it doing that -and- the tooltip makes reference to it. But this is no longer the case (except in PvP) and Fiery Embrace will only add a portion of the attack's power as a fire damage extra. Fire attacks or otherwise.

Energy Transfer gets even nuttier than that since it requires neither recharge nor endurance in a rotation where it always comes after Total Focus. Four damage procs and two Hamis do some serious boosting of what was already an incredibly strong attack when the lack of recharge boosts the chance of procs. That said I'm pretty in love with Stone Melee and Seismic Smash, but hampered by the lack of early AoE. It has to go to Brutes and Fire Armor to at least have Burn at 28. Unfortunately procced out Radiation Therapy does not cut it as an AoE though it is great as a boost to a primary's AoE.

Fun fun I would say the MA version. The first times we do Burn followed by Dragontail and everyrhing is burning, flopping, FF procs acrivates... It is glorious. Someone describbed it as turbo charged blowtorch and it fits. The cherry on top is the 45% defense. It takes doing content with a ton of debuffs to appreciate how they are not landing. But with your preference to level with SOs then Ice Melee (do try to stick minimum two damage procs in Burn).