Sovera

Re-made the Rad/Fire in the original post to have all the goods (Devastating Blow + Atom Smasher). My previous plays of the build (even on a Brute) stalled due to the unimpressive ST but it made sense when not using DB. Also trying a Kinetic Melee version and it seems to actually work well with Fury pushing the low damage in the lower levels and then Burn picking up in the mid levels. The combo seems to complement itself with the longer lasting Build-Up mechanic playing well with the longer lasting Fiery Embrace. It's not too different from the Martial Arts tanker version where Dragon Tail helps pumping up the damage, but the difference is that on a Brute the MA variant only has Dragon tail at 26. It very much needs Burn to pick the damage up though.

To be fair with PK I had the same reaction yesterday when I tried to explain to someone how to copy a macro from the chat and they answered they didn't know how to (they also gave up even after I and the team piped in trying to explain 'click on text, drag cursor to select text, control C'). My own first reaction was 'how can you be on a computer, in a MMO, and not know how to copy text?'. That said yes, it is as you've said afterwards, we are all just so used to things that we take them for absolute granted. Welcome back to CoH and good news on making it work!

This brought me to mind yesterday as I made an alt and knew I was going to run a DFB or the same arcs I usually do. Not sure why we can't Ouro from level 1 if we can go to Ouro at level 1 and get the portal. Leveling the regular way outlevels contacts mid mission. It's -very- common to start the game, pick a contact, and two missions in we ge the 'I have nothing for you' because we lets its level range. One of the features I like of Ouro is also the level stasis. I don't want to freeze XP because I'm literally leveling, but I go do a mission and level 2-3 times and I'm fight -1 or -2 enemies which is drab. Ouro prevents this. Basically I would really like to just make a new alt, pick a contact from Ouro, run its full arc, then rinse and repeat. Instead of PL myself or run the same DFB-twice-because-a-single-run-of-DFB-leaves-me-at-level-7, Posi 1, Posi 2, route. I suppose it is not a big deal since we can just faff around until 15, but it seems arbitrary.

Since I seem to be attracting 'downvotes' and laughter. Objectively Thunderstrike with it's monumental 3.4 second animation to do 457 damage to the main target and half that to the rest caught in the radius is not great. Maybe if it did not split the damage in half for the other mobs caught in the radius. Lightning Rod that just does twice the damage of a regular PbAoE. Not using Claws because Spin is an outlier, but randomly grabbing Savage from one of my builds it does 239 damage and recharges in 4.59 seconds. Shield Charge does.... 418 on 27 seconds cooldown. Is it bad? No, it's a bit less than twice the damage of a regular PbAoE after all. But it's also on a 27 second timer. Chain Induction is great with a speedy 1.2 cast and something like 356 damage. It's a chain and that has problems like if it misses the chain stops there. Regardless of the above I don't speak just because I feel like it. I tested. I don't spreadsheet. I go, level a character, play it, then report. While we can say that Burn skews things both the Martial Arts and Elec Melee had Burn so parity was maintained. Both did the clear of the map in the same time despite Elec having three AoEs and MA having one. Despite Burn (obviously) carrying things it would make a lot more sense that the 'clearly superior AoE build' would have a much better clearing time. I have nothing more to say on the subject.

It really isn't. Thunderstrike is slow as molasses and does half the damage to those who aren't the target (so don't look at TS' damage on mids and assume everyone is taking that damage in the radius). Lightning Rod does twice the damage of a regular PbAoE with 4-5x the recharge time. Chain Induction is ok and that's about it. It's like saying Staff is a great AoE set. No, it isn't. It has lots of AoEs which is different, but they are slow and do little damage so we're stuck animating low damage skills.

It's the sort of thing that would also prop up the ailing Elec Melee.

How does Brimstone's proc compare as a damage proc? Second 'damage aura' or something that feels significant?

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.