Sovera

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.

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.