Sovera

It's as complicated as logging into the test server and hitting a pylon. I'm personally pretty disappointed with Fault. It can't be called an AoE when full bar of Fury + BU + Gaussian puts minions to half HP.

As promised a Stone/Fire that includes Fault. The good: a low level AoE! Stone needed one. The bad: Fault is not actually an AoE. Full bar of Fury + BU + Gaussian = minions at half HP. Considering the recharge and endurance cost this is beyond terrible. The horrible: Fault has incredibly bad native accuracy. It takes being level 50 with all the raw stats + Focused Accuracy + accuracy bonuses from miscellany sets for it to have 90% chance to hit. In the low levels even with it slotted it is embarrassing to use the skill and see so many misses. Again, considering the cost and recharge... Also the horrible: Fault does not work while hovering. The devs refused to open a line of communication when asked if they could copy paste the code that lets Tremor/Footstomp/Burn be used while hovering, so I have no news to tell whether it is possible, impossible, too much work, an absolute no or a maybe. So for now I have a couple binds that I use to turn Hover on and off and it's as kludgy as anyone can guess. For the rest of you who are okay with not using Fly just move on past. Overall where I praise the previous build - DM/Fire - I cringe at this one. It's my first and only Brute/Tanker that I could look at and honest say 'This would not have soloed Posi 1, no way, not ever'. This is because it encapsulates the worst of CoH gameplay. City of Cooldowns? City of Out of Endurance? Yes. Too long CDs, too heavy costs, then when the power is finally up we use it and it misses. Horrible. I can only imagine trying to solo Posi 1 with Fault unable to actually do damage and the slow as molasses progress trying to make endurance last while tapping my foot at the recharge timers. Fault is also not Ice Patch and the mitigation from it was heh. Heh enough that I'm considering it is a waste of slots to keep the power. That said the build has good potential but Fire Armor will be carrying it. Consume to help with the endurance, Burn to have an AoE until 32, etc. Seismic Smash still hits very hard and stuns a boss with just one hit and the whole ST rotation is available very early. Despite Fault being crap it does take an FF proc which reduces its role to risible AoE damage, middling to puny mitigation, but a turbo for the rest of the build. A bit like Dragon Tail but I'd take Dragon Tail over Fault. We can chalk this as birthing pangs and with full IOs, more global recharge, etc, that things will straighten up. Later on I can imagine that spamming Fault + the improved Tremor will help a lot with mitigation while Burn does the actual AoE damage. So I'll force myself to level a bit more, but it was cringy to reach Yin and take a minute circling around the first spawn slowly whittling them with Fault because I didn't have Burn yet. If the objective was adding a low level AoE until 32 it failed.

Fire/Ice melee is my usual recommendation for a new player. I've spoken it about it too often to re-hash it but it's in my signature with the whys and whatfors.

Nowadays probably EM. DM is for more extreme survival but though it behaves well (I had good results soloing with the new DM) I feel it it counter-intuitive for group play with the slow animation of Soul Drain and wanting mobs grouped up where in team play they get obliterated in seconds. To be honest try the new Stone Melee maybe? Anyway, here you go, it relies on Barrier's 5% to finish capping defense and resistances. It's all around much cheaper with the exception of the ATOs. There's a free power I didn't know what to do with so take whatever you'd like-

Bio is for damage and is squishier but, Sentinels are less prone to damage taking since they fly and the build is 100% ranged. /Fire would have Burn which does pretty good damage when all procced out, but demands to be in melee range to drop it. Ablative and DNA Reconstruction as heals and Barrier as a panic button. I don't feel there is a point in chasing more defense. Otherwise I might say regen or SR. Again Sentinels take less damage to start with.

Outdated, check the other post below where I have included the leveling build. Since everyone is going to be rolling one of these (myself included) here's a build. It's not perfect and I lack infinite slots so, welp, only one AoE (two with the nuke) and I sacrificed a bit of S/L defense to get more recovery. I vaguely recall that Sentinels were very good on endurance thanks to defensive opportunity thingy so that extra slot in Health can probably return to Pulverize with five Superior Blistering Cold. As fliers I don't think the extra 1% is worth the 100 million, but, eh, options. As always it asks for Barrier as a panic button and to finish capping defenses.

I realize I'm still posting on the feedback thread so I'll cross post here: So, no communication on Fault being used while having Hover/Mystic flight? It would have been nice to have a maybe, no, we'll think about it, too much work, answer. Toggleon and toggleoff keybinds it is I guess. Alright, this is what I have. It's clumsy because it require two keypresses to toggle Hover on and off and introduces gaps. Change Hover for whatever flight power you're using. It's possible three keypresses are required if having Hover + Fly on as well as modifying the macro. /bind lshift+1 "$$powexectoggleoff hover$$powexecname fault" - This requires two keypresses if for no other reason that when Hover/Flight/Mystic Flight/Jetpack is toggled off we are still in the air. It takes a second to drop, so, welp, a keypress, wait until we touch the ground, then a second keypress. /bind 1 "$$powexecslot 1$$powexectoggleon hover" - This too requires two keypresses and will reactivate Hover/Mystic Flight/Flight/Jetpack. The powexectoggleon ensures that part will only activate if any of the above are toggled off. I suggest perhaps making more than one bind, maybe one for Tremor who doesn't care about roleplay and one more than just the first attack in case it's on cooldown.

Alright, this is what I have. It's clumsy because it require two keypresses to toggle Hover on and off and introduces gaps. Change Hover for whatever flight power you're using. It's possible three keypresses are required if having Hover + Fly on as well as modifying the macro. /bind lshift+1 "$$powexectoggleoff hover$$powexecname fault" - This requires two keypresses if for no other reason that when Hover/Flight/Mystic Flight/Jetpack is toggled off we are still in the air. It takes a second to drop, so, welp, a keypress, wait until we touch the ground, then a second keypress. /bind 1 "$$powexecslot 1$$powexectoggleon hover" - This too requires two keypresses and will reactivate Hover/Mystic Flight/Flight/Jetpack. The powexectoggleon ensures that part will only activate if any of the above are toggled off. I suggest perhaps making more than one bind, maybe one for Tremor who doesn't care about roleplay and one more than just the first attack in case it's on cooldown.

So, no communication on Fault being used while having Hover/Mystic flight? It would have been nice to have a maybe, no, we'll think about it, too much work, answer. Toggleon and toggleoff keybinds it is I guess.

What seemed to have fixed the issue (I waited to see if it would continue was not changing the layout of the keyboard but going through all the HC executables and tick the compatibility mode. I've 'only' had two crashes since my last post which is a tremendous net positive of how it used to be.

Nothing is going to hold its ground at +3 at those levels. Unless you have buffs and debuffs from the team helping. But at 12-15 it's still a death sentence considering the forced scaling down of stats. You may need to temper your expectations.

Fire/Ice Melee. By level 20 (ergo exemped to 15) you got a heal, an endurance clicky, Burn and Ice Patch. Locked at 12... If you'd say 13 I'd say Fire/Claws Spin + Burn would hurt enemies before they hurt you much. Not sure about the other examples here but if we had a friendly 'lets solo Posi 1 at +0x8' competition I'd stick with Fire/Ice 100%.

It will, of course, push towards having a certain team composition. The reason we grab anything up to and including 4-5 of the same AT is because the content is easy. If we have content that 'tears defenses' then yeah, of course we'll need counter measures.

I agree with what you are saying, but lets take it easy with that example since that challenge mode is one TF (so far). There is only so many times one TF can be ran in a month before tedium settles in.

Since no one answer I'll drop you this. It's something I started leveling but couldn't get away from my beloved Fire Armor. It's going to rely on three stacks of the ATO in Total Focus to reach 90% which is not going to work too well due to Total Focus' long recharge (recharges in 6 seconds, proc lasts 10 seconds). It would be smarter to swap the slotting with Energy Transfer since ET will be used much more often than TF, but, then the proc won't be had in the lower levels. An argument can be made that +1x8 content does not require worrying over those 14-20% resistances which is valid. I picked Shield Charge but to be honest I might prefer Power Crash instead. It does more damage than Shield Charge in the time it takes Shield Charge to be back online. On the other hand it's a cone and SC is fireball effect, and burst might be nice. All a matter of testing for yourself and see which one you like better. The single target rotation is going to be a bit of a pain. I imagine it to be something like Total Focus, (fast) Energy Transfer, Bone Smasher, Barrage, (slow) Energy Transfer. Start again. It's definitely not perfect. That said @Bill Z Bubba and @Werner have Shield/EM Tankers they swear on so lets ring them.

But tbh it is all that's needed. There are few sets who can easily push defense to exorbitant numbers. So defense cap for 95% of the game and then buffers for challenge mode.

I see what you mean. And I imagined it might be like that. A more long term (but is it even possible?) solution would be having the gloves/boots asset be independent so that only the asset itself is visible which then sits on the model, instead of replacing the limb extremity with, as you've pointed out, one fingerless glove with rock skin, one fingerless glove for bio, one fingerless glove for monstrous, etc. Sadly the game is old and when things aren't built from the ground up I can imagine it to be pretty difficult to improvise something the engine was not prepared for. But it does put a brake on things when we cannot use fingerless gloves, or the few options like heels or sandals, or the myriad tops that show skin. Fortunately we have Chest Detail with those few options like the barbarian bikini(tops and the Steampunk tops. More options for the Chest Detail with those myriad chest options would work, but I imagine it not a simple case of copy pasting from one menu to the other. But the Chest Detail is pretty much what I mean in terms of the asset going on top of the model which preserves the skin's theme. Regardless thanks for the explanation and time.

My own original point was not so much to add to the power creep but to add an alternative. A set that gives Kinetic Combat relative bonuses and that can be slotted but once (like Synapse's shock) is a nice alternative to slotting something useless like Brawl. But I suppose it does count as power creep by making a travel power better where it would not before the set's introduction.

I'm not sure how to explain even more easily. Perhaps some screenshots are in order. Alright, so, at the risk of overexplaining. This was an option with Champions where skins and skin colors were not a part of costumes. That way we could have fur -and- a costume instead of always having to choosing fur -as- a costume. In CoH we can choose, for example, Bio-lum for gloves. Okay, we get the stripes, the pebbly leathery look on the forearms. But if we decide to use, for example, the fingerless glove, then that is replaced by human skin wearing the fingerless glove. With this change we could use sneakers or sandals and not have human skin just because we picked a sandal who replaces the whole foot-to-the-knee. Using the above example the whole hand-to-the-elbow is replaced for the fingerless glove effectively preventing anyone with any of the skin themes from using that glove. There are dozens of examples more beyond what I mentioned in the previous post but they will boil down to the same. Spectrum? Can't use sneakers or gloves that show skin. All of the costumes that show skin? They show human skin and not the Spectrum/Bio/Organic. Which brings back what I mentioned. In the tab where we choose skin color we could a dropdown menu that has all the 'skin themes'. Monstrous fur, bio-lumi, organic armor, rock skin, etc etc etc etc. Same way we pick a hue we pick what the skin's theme is. Bio, or Rock, or Spectrum or the dozen options. The usual fear comes from clipping but all of these are painted textures, not 3D, so no clipping would happen. And yes, I'm aware of the suggestion forums, like I'm aware anything posted there dies in that barren desert.

There is one thing that is very dear to me, though I know it's not something just glibly implemented, and that is having a list of 'skins' in the skin color window. Picking any of the bio-luminescence, metallic, organic, etc options automatically shuts us off from the rest of the options. Furthermore the way the game is so old and how it shows. Picking bioluminescence legs, for example, sharply cuts the skin at the knee so if we pick anything other than boots that cover to the knee or the biolumi feet option it looks really bad. Not wanting to go around 'naked' while using biolumi/organic/monstrous fur/tiger strips/leopard spots/spectrum/etc locks us into jackets and chest detail (and thank goodness we have chest details!). Most of this is something that could be bypassed by having those skins in the skin color window. They don't have protruding textures that will cause clipping so normal clothes will just go on top.

My own point is that they bonuses are so unappealing (even in the last suggestion) that they might as well not be in the game. It's not me railing against Booper for a lack of imagination or the devs for not allowing better/more useful bonuses, just an observation based on multitude of builds built, on goals that were aimed for, and current sets we already have. If suddenly we had an extra 10 slots to play with I would maybe consider them but it would be niche. Now, well, my point of view is but my own. Others said that they were happy with it. Some even play with their travel powers on? Obviously -someone- will find use for the new sets. I wonder to myself how statistically significant that percentage will be though.

I have to say I'm getting the same feeling with DM as I originally did with Ice Melee, as in, started one on a lark and then be suitably impressed. The darn thing is behaving -very- well! Two AoEs by level 8 made me go into Posi 1 at level 8 with the difficulty at +0x6 and though I died twice it masticated everything. Considering the slots I had available it was an impressive melting of spawns. Tough the little heal from Siphon Life is completely unimpressive it did add that little bit extra. I tried this combo as a Tanker and felt no chemistry, but on a Brute it's razing. The lack of Build-up was felt in Posi 2 where the CoT usual BS caused much kiting since I couldn't overpower the -accuracy, but it was killing so fast I didn't have as much trouble as I first imagined. I know in the low levels Brutes are strong, but I've leveled more than one recently and I could tell the difference. As a bonus is has most of its kit by level 20 lacking only 28 for Burn. But for once I was not slogging through content for that magic number. It's going to be nice having it for sure, but it was no slog to go up the levels.

I have been leveling the Street justice build and thinking, hmmm... something is missing. Something is not clicking. And eventually figured out: the builders are anemic. 200 and 250 were just not exciting to press the buttons. Fast animations for sure, very forgiving fast recharges as well, but anemic. Bone Smasher hits for 350. Vicious Slash for 440. Siphon Life for 530 (not using Soul Drain). The FF procs worked really well at pushing the recharge even in the low levels though. I feel like I will try Dark Melee instead. Even without Midnight Grasp two Siphon Life outdamage Crushing Impact. On a Tanker there wasn't much point but it had Burn at level 18 instead of 28 so it's a good excuse to grab Touch of Fear and see how it feels on a Brute.

Middle of the pack isn't terrible. It's a set chockful of CC and because of budget that must be paid (which is why when Fire Melee gets a pass it will go all the way to the top mostest damage further even than Energy Melee who ALSO is chockful of CC.... Okay, I just contradicted myself, nvm) it can't be best damage while also have those secondary effects. Regardless all the CC is pretty good and getting an early AoE to not wait until 32 is also good. I hope we get the Tremor code transplanted to it though. But the it will be difficult to argue for a widening of the cone when it's a power that has its budget overcharged by the fact it CCs -and- damages.

Can, yeah, you can. But do you really want to? It does slightly more damage than a T2 (around 255 damage) on a T9's recharge. The radius is pretty decent at 15y but we're talking 30 second recharge at best so the FF proc don't you much good. Perhaps Cross Punch would work better for your purpose (250 damage with... a two second recharge) though you'll have to scrounge those slots from somewhere. Something like this I suppose. It's not perfect but gives an idea. Trouble to me is always the lateness I end up getting Crosspunch. There are too many more urgent picks to get, but that's just me.