Sovera

I've reorganized things in the first post. My new ranking is: - All rounder good-out-of-the-box build: Fire/Ice. Pick it up, play, no need to fuss with IO castle of cards. Ice Patch keeps the player and the team safe until defenses are in place. The slightly slower pylon times do not reflect that cold damage is a lot less resisted than smash/lethal in the 'real world'. - Turtle defensive build: Fire/Martial Arts. Best defensive option. Even most psi attacks meet the Ranged defense wall. Doesn't lose in offense but relies on extensive IO gimmicks which means it blooms late. - Dragon offense oriented build: Fire/Claws. (Near) permanent 70% damage boost. No fuss burninating between Burn and Spin being PbAoEs so no need to re-position as with Frost. Both also crunch in ways that leave other sets deeply envious and the single target is (slightly) the best of the three.

*smack* Anyway, I was messing with a Ice Melee/Fire Armor Br00t version earlier on and got this. At the cost of about 27% resistance to E/N it will make up the loss of early Burn with Fury which will clear entire groups with Frost. Later on Fury makes a substantial difference in things like Freezing Touch (180+ extra damage compared to Tanker) but less so in others (about extra 60 damage in Burn which is about the damage increase in the other attacks as well because of sacrifices in not including damage procs). But considering S/L defense and resistance has been wrangled to near Tanker equivalent levels and Ice Patch helps with survival it might be worth it. I prefer Fiery embrace at 28 instead of 35 and Burn at 18 instead of 28, but Fury makes a difference and not having to take Frozen Fists is nice. It's up for the individual to decide.

I can only speak as a Tanker, but yes, and yes. Anything is survivable in PvE since we can tailor the difficulty and in a team we are bound to be covered in buffs.

Exactly. That's why I love my Fire Tankers and even Scrappers I feel as slow (despite maths and testing showing that they are not). There's also the matter of burst. Once something is dead it cannot be made double dead, so Tanker damage is more than fine once we start thinking that Build-up + AoEs will kill most things. It's the tougher and longer fights where the damage difference shows. Scrappers are definitely for maximum damage though, but Burn has a.. uhm... how to put it... Lets say that Scrappers have more horsepower under the hood, but until a certain level they lack the means to let it out. Where when I level/play a Fire Tanker I can start (near) every fight either with Build-Up or Firey Embrace thus bursting for the initial seconds and then have my AoE from the secondary with Burn as a second AoE/heavy ST attack as low as Posi 1.

Scrappers and Tankers are worlds apart. My most destructive Tanker will do the Trapdoor test (Scrapper forums for more info) in 6 minutes. The best Scrapper times are as low as 4 minutes and something. My best Pylon time is 3 minutes. A Scrapper can scrap past one minute (though usually 1:30 for the top models). On the other hand Tankers do the ITF solo challenge (+4x8, enemies buffed, players debuffed) and survive it. This is not as great as it sounds since when the hell does this metric ever enter in regular gameplay? For most things Scrappers can be build sturdy enough to survive content as long as they kill it fast enough. I play a Fire Armor combo because I find Fire Armor Tankers bloom super early. No waiting until level 30-40 to feel powerful or sturdy enough as Scrappers (in my experience) need to. By level 20 I'm melting swathes of enemies and laugh in the face of danger (especially with the FireArmor/Ice Melee variant). It's a simple case of deciding whether to build to be more damage oriented or more sturdy.

You're the only one who can answer that. Having it turned on increases Hover speed, as well as Fly speed, it increases KB protection, it gives protection against -fly effects. And yes, it adds another one slot wonder for LotG 7.5%. If this is important to you or not only you can say. Personally I love it since it turns Hover slow crawl to a fast jog and increases Fly speed to almost reach the cap and I'm starving for places to slot LotG.

Everything that could possibly be said on this subject has been said, but if you are at the level where not knowing how to afford your SOs then you can probably make good use of the guide in my signature. Just to give a perspective by running the first TF in the game (and the least rewarding) you get something like 3 mill. Completely slotting in generic IOs (not SOs because as you noticed they go red, while generic IOs never go red) costs something like 2 mill. You can even solo these if you feel so inclined because of not liking groups. Running missions arcs (not newspaper missions, not Architect missions) also gives merits. As per the guide in the signature check your salvage, see how many you have, you might have a lot more money to your name than you think.

You're chasing too much recharge considering you have zero cooldowns. I would break apart more stuff (toxic damage and fire/cold is not that prevalent to spends slots on) and add more damage procs. Despite this I would replace the psi proc in Focus for the Force Feedback or at least a Gladiator's Javelin proc. Toxic isn't great but psi gets slapped hard too. Again the FF proc would be the usual thing but with zero cooldowns I don't see the point. I would replace Agility. It only adds a bit of defense but you're already at 57% for Melee and 52% for the rest (both +3% uniques in RoP). Take Alpha 33% if you want damage and some endurance recovery. Resilient for more resistances could be a given but it doesn't add much since SR has no resistance powers and the autos don't seem to count according to Mids. Consider maybe Cardiac to ease your endurance. Which cues into not taking Shockwave being bold. Spin is great, true, but Shockwave adds more AoE and soft CC. It will eat your endurance though hence maybe Cardiac. I'd keep the ST rotation to FU, Slash and Focus even with a gap. With all the recharge chasing you've done the gap is a measly 0.3 seconds so worth it. For Incarnates you can either go for Rebirth as a big heal and lots of regen which plays well with all the defense, or Barrier, which seems stupid since there is so much defense to begin with, but it will also pump up your resistances. You can probably ease up on the resistance chasing and shuffle things around, then consider alternating Barrier and Rune of Protection, and when I mean 'alternate' what I mean is 'when you're in trouble these two are your panic buttons. If there is no panic then let them be'. Overall I think your build is already solid and it's just some min maxing. Just consider you don't need a ton of recharge because you have no cooldowns, that your attacks might welcome damage procs to help your Tanker damage, that Shockwave is a worthwhile addition,

It doesn't buff damage (I don't consider 20% recharge as buffing damage), doesn't have a heal nor endurance. The game being what it is a heal and endurance are needed. Much later it can ignore most problems as long as those problems don't auto hit. There are some things who will do this but not enough to be considered a problem (until doing whole arcs or TFs with Ruularu or just fighting Hami). The problem is that it requires nearly all powers and without resistances and without a consolidated defense SR has nothing so someone trying it starts squishy (as 20-25% defense is good in spreadsheet terms but does not stop someone getting killed), has no heal to make up for this, runs out of endurance. If they are a tank and build in a very specific manner they can be near impervious (40% defense) by level 24-26, but anything else will not. Also take how both +3% defense uniques come into play to help reaching non squishy levels but are tied to having Tough which invariably gets pushed to level 30+ (unless taking Rune of Protection early by going Sorcery for a travel power). So overall it's like Neme just said. It has a rocky start and needs lots of love despite the 'but it's so easy to get good numbers on it'. It gets those good numbers when all powers are taken and then slotted, but someone leveling/exemplaring won't feel it. My own experience differs from SR lovers like Bill perhaps because of my lack of experience with the builds, but with me a SR character crumpled when stress tested where they talk about going into +4x8 with 'enemies buffed' and the enemies unable to hurt them even if going AFK. But where I rarely touched SR Bill and others make SR their lifestyle so definitely listen to the ones who have the experience backing up their opinion. Now, if you want to talk Fire Armor then come along with me 😄

I don't see regen doing anything other than crumble once not facing Council. So I'm not sure why you'd want to inflict it on Tankers. If you want Regen go WP and heal for 90+ HP a second with one enemy in range. Or 100-ish with Bio in Efficient Adaptation.

I find Tanks tend to suffer more with late peakness. In a MMO 90% of content is killing things. Slogging through 32-38 levels to get important powers is just bad. But it would be okay if exemplaring ever was reworked (vain hope). Slogging -once- to 38 to get Footstomp and finally an AoE would be reasonable if from then on every exemplaring had it available albeit at a reduced power a la GW2 system. Sets that have an early AoE and early ST work a lot better when their later powers is just something to add more spice. Tanks also suffer from the sadness that is having Taunt pushing important powers for later. Swap Taunt for Rage and suddenly SS is a lot more palatable as a SS character at least has damage backing its ST to make for their bad... well... everything, starting at level 16-18. Same with Soul Drain for the same reason. Stone Melee's sole AoE at 28. Exchange places with Taunt and a Stone Melee in an AoE game like CoH can do something. Some sets show a lack of understanding of the game. Tanks got Martial Art's sole AoE down to 20. I applaud this. But looking at a Brute version of the Martial Arts/Fire Armor build I never even desired to play it since my first AoE comes at 26 and the next at 28 Have fun leveling with only a P2W attack for AoE. Which again, would be okay, if from then on that 'danger' did not loom if exemplaring lower than that happened. It's why I wax poetic over things like Fire Armor/Ice with early AoE at level 4, Build-up at 16, Burn at 18, Ice Patch at 20, Fiery Embrace at 26 and Freezing Touch at 28. Everything else is just filling.

Easiest solution would be incorporating the code that makes our destination light up in the portal menu if we have a mission there and apply it to the LFG tab. All WSTs are lit up. If we did one then it is no longer lit up.

I personally don't even like +4. Fortunately I find +3 the cut off point since its where incarnates leave me. +5 is ridiculous and I don't even touch it with a ten feet pole after the few times I join ITFs while leveling. My hardest attacks doing double digit damage is in no way entertaining. Which is mostly my problem with calling for higher difficulties. I just don't equate slogging slowly with double digit damage as difficult, I just equate it with slowness. Difficult is more like my recent incursion into First Ward. Heck, even IOed to the eyeballs my Fire Tank just melted at a miserable +1x8 versus Shepherds. The problem with difficult is that is can be pretty binary. It's either too easy and nothing stops us (every other faction in First Ward) or so difficult it deletes me (Shepherds). Fortunately I was on a character with Ice Patch that allowed me to push the envelope. But the (really) nice thing about CoH is that it comes built in with a gradient for that binary scenario. Shpherds too tough? Remove bosses from soloing. Lower to x6. Go to x0. Other games will just throw us into the content and then it's like, WELP! YOU NEED A CONTROLLER FOR THIS! Or X buff, or a healer, or etc.

Everything that could be said has been done in a clear and concise manner. I am like you that do not like going around with an endurance and health recovery mechanic, but this is also because I hop up and down the scale and examplar lots. Having everything tied to set bonuses which may disappear and incarnates that do disappear, is not something I want to play with. Even 45% defense isn't enough. We take hits. We will need to recover the HP lost from those hits. The answer is getting tons of resistance on top of the defense or heals. Invulnerability for example can AFK in the middle of the ambush atop the hill in the first ITF mission. Shield can do the same. One has more defense than average for a resist set, and other has more resistance than average for a defensive set.

As per Jax's advice you ought to finish capping your defense first. If things don't hurt you you don't need resistances. Otherwise you did a good creative job out of it. But I would still say reach your 40/45% as a permanent layer of protection. This will work for 95% of the game. So sacrific a few things, and for example add three slots to Bloodthirst for an easy 2.5%. I would say a bit outside-of-the-box-but-actually-it-is-a-common would be alternate One with the Shield with... whatever. You can work in Rune of Protection and use Mystic Flight for transport. Or use Barrier instead of Ageless. Tbh if you're rocking 45 or more percent in defense you'll go long stretches without ever fearing for your life. And then once in a while something happens, HP dips dangerously, and that's when you click your panic button. I would rather work in a heal like Rebirth but it's true you need endurance. Endurance does have Recovery Serums available though. Overall I think you got a good build going and you'll be fine. I would drop the emphasis on fire/cold resistance which isn't as important and try to work in more resistance to the the more common energy/negative attacks.

Did you hire Linea?

And now we wait. Good job Piecemeal, now I need to find it in me to sleep after that shot of news in the vein.

The annoying thing about the farming (to me) is the begging. Someone doing 'I'm going to farm and welcome people' is fine. But the spam of 'is anyone fawming? Could ah seet by the doow while you fawm?' does rub me wrong. 'Can someone play the game for me? Can I just AFK and be rewarded?' This is as close as we get to the mythical 'what if players just got a button to press that would make them level 50 fully incarnated and with a billion inf'. Yikes. At least level a farmer and farm yourself without begging for a spot to doorsit while someone does the work. But that would defeat the purpose. That would be work. They don't want work. They want their dole.

Builds are both a bit like art and also something personal. Things that work for someone else might not for you and vice versa. Consider something like this: You can do Devastating Blow, Radioactive Smash, Radiation Siphon, Radioactive Smash and repeat. I personally don't feel that Zapp + Ball Lightning adds much to the build but since you had it I kept it. Musculature for more damage and Barrier for a panic button if things go bad (or to finish capping defense). DNA Siphon is pretty much all your endurance needs met, but it won't do much for extended single target scenarios or exemplared under its reach. That aid Recovery Serums is the answer to both of that. Ablative Shield is your number one defensive move so it should be slotted accordingly. After that comes DNA Siphon which is good enough to fill up an HP bar if surrounded by enemies. Then Parasitic Aura. Then Barrier. In my experience Parasitic Aura does close to nothing to keep someone alive where Barrier means pretty much invulnerability for the first 30 seconds.

Do you happen to mean Panaceia with Pancreas?

Greater Sword Circle you mean Greater Ice Sword? It's quite garbage (9 points more damaging than Frost, but single target) but if you like the animation then go for it. Arcane Bolt I tested and frankly it did less damage than Frozen Fists so I don't where the gushing over it is coming from. But it's a source of Force Feedback procs, so go for it. You can use FA with just one endurance reduction in it. Could take Permafrost out for it since it only adds Fire/Cold res (not terribly important) and Slow (to which you're overcapped anyway. You can slot the -slow in Mystic Flight to recoup if you feel like it). It's a bit heavy though, and Ice Armor is heavy to begin with. Finding room for Physical Perfection wouldn't go amiss to stretch uses of Energy Absorption though as long as it is not a long ST scenario it ought to keep you up, but you have already scrounged slots from Stamina/Health. Well, just keep Recovery Serums at hand see if you need them or not. Frankly the build looks mighty fine. You'll have to see if you enjoy the Sorcery pool all the way to end game but if not it's easy to respec.

Offering bribes isn't necessary. Check the thread I mentioned, compare your build to the agreed-as-optimal, slot accordingly. Your goals are going to be 45% defense against fire and 90% resistance against fire.

To be honest not even that approach satisfies me. Because of body blocking mobs do several concentric rings around me. Once the first ring is dead arrested the second ring surrounds me. This repeats itself until all are dead. Even when a Controller waits until I'm surrounded I no longer have enemies scooting closer when they are immobilized. Like I said, when the enemies don't hurt and no one is in danger spamming mass CCs does nothing. Fears, immobilizes, stuns. They are great for optional panic buttons such as two spawns close together or ambushes, which are moments when the number of enemies surpass 17 and some will be running around trying to hit the rest of the team. But outside those panic moments to be used or not be used influences nothing, and most of the time just slows everything. It's hardly a big deal though, but it is what it is. Now in that example of the Resistance being a dangerous group that would be when stuns and fears would make a large difference in survival, so the fault lies in the game that makes 90% of the content too easy to require anything more fancy than hitting something until it stops moving.

I was playing with three controllers a couple weeks back and I could see that I upset one of them. They were majestically polite though. We started doing a Synapse and of course everyone starts spamming their immobilizes. I ask if they could not. Keep playing. They keep doing it. I let a few minutes pass and then ask again if they could not. They keep doing it. I wasn't upset nor did I berate them. But it was so obviously unnecessary. Nothing was added by using the mass immobilizes. The mobs were not hurting, no one was dying, and instead of killing faster we were slogging through as my main strength of bursty AoE was diluted by only hitting part of the spawn. After another mission I take the time and re-mention how the spam of immobilizes, fears and stuns was only slowing things. Instead of the enemies clustering around me for AoE they had to be picked one by one where ever they had been feared, immobilized, or were staggering drunkenly. That's when one of them said started staying by the door, and when someone asked they said they had no powers they could use at that level if they could not use their CC. And, I mean, as I said above they were polite about it, no snark, no growling. The best part is that I actually appreciated it. I would rather do the TF with one person doorsitting than the spam of mass immobilizes. The other two also stopped using theirs, though the spam of mass fears and stuns continued. I'm sure they felt they were helping, bless. Edit: it feels like I'm talking shit when I come to the Controller forums to say how their CC is not needed and only slows down things. The problem really lays in the game. For 90% of the game everything is easy. The last 10% a Controller would be appreciated but they have to contend with 90% of the game. Such as I was doing a First Ward arc with a friend and we come across the Resistance. Phew, we had torn a new one to everything until then and suddenly those guys were debuffing and eating my endurance like no one's business. Suddenly that was where a Controller would have shined. But in order to be useful in that instance they would have had to be a fifth wheel (uncharitable hyperbole) until then.

Check the Guide section of the forums, then find the Farm Fresh thread. It's where all things farming and absolutely min maxed builds for the effect are discussed. But I'd go through the Market section and read a bit there since the money those guys make could make a farmer cry in envy.... and then you can still farm on top of it.