Sovera

Not sure if it's an achievement thing you're working for or just the badge, but there's an NPC you can talk to instantly move from one alignment to the other.

Ice Armor does that. That's because it 100% relies on Energy Absorption to be used at every pack pretty much. As Zork said pick Recovery Serums since they are so cheap and live off them until Energy Absorption can be picked.

Then let me help you by saying that Axe goes like a house on fire (see what I did there?) with Fire Armor. Thanks to the first AoE having a FF it does the same job of Dragon Tail in accelerating all the build's cooldowns. You'll find it in page 6. The WM I tried as well, it is in page 3.

It doesn't have -res though. It's just a bad copy from Tankers back when they had -res in their primary. You can check the in-game info but you'll see it's just Mids. Not even Tankers have the -res now. Frozen Fists is acknowledged as terribad due to the lengthy animation and T1 damage. But Ice Melee is lacking in attacks so it tends to be used. GiS is just... like, wow, bad. It animates in the same time as Frost but only hits one target and does a whooping... nine more damage. I suggest Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword. Repeat. You can focus on a boss and ignore the rest of the pack and by repositioning you'll be killing everything at the same time you're walloping the boss.

And as you said the prices keep up. For sure we used to sell converters for 90-120k, but purples were also worth 24-25 mill. Now we sell them for 70-75k... but the purples are worth 17-18 mill. RL this ain't where converters would drop to 70-75k and purples go up to 30-35 mill.

As an aside Praetoria has... so... much... content... I tried to do it once by Ouro. My god, it never ended. So... many... arcs... Which would have been fine if I was not locked at level 10 for most of it and with access to minimal AoE. I completely burned out by the time I got to the level 14-19 ones. That said I ought to have run them at x1 just for the sake of experiencing it.

Well, Bio is squishy until you get all the defenses in place. But I suppose that is true of everything. Consider that Ice Bio I posted recently so you're not as squish, or Claws/Invuln. EA too is great but it once more demands being in the 40s to have all defenses in place. In a team it does not matter much since everything dies in seconds. At most just don't charge into the alpha without Ablative up.

I bit the bullet and am currently leveling the Fire/Spines. Not quite sure what to think of it though. On one hand I went into Posi 1 0x6 with bosses at level 18 (for those not in the know this means Burn with one slot and Ripper, my only other AoE, with three slots, and no IOs in Hasten and BU) and walked out without a death. Then I went into Posi 2, same, and somewhat to my surprise Vahz melted. I'm not really sure why, but it just melted. I looked back to Mids and the three ST attacks are still weak so I can't really say what happened, except perhaps that using both T1 and T2 meant that I had a nice attack chain going with minimal pauses. Ripper also helped a bit with the FF proc I guess. Speaking of Ripper it feels like a disappointment to be honest. Such a slow animation, such low damage. I also don't 'feel' the 180º angle, perhaps because I was using Frost which is only 90º, but with the Tanker buff (which Ripper doesn't get) turned it into 135º. With its long cone it was easy to catch a lot of enemies and it still does a ton of damage despite showing as only 227 compared to Ripper's 294. I already had the same reaction to Shadow Maul VS Frost where SM also had much better Mids numbers but when using both Frost just seems to vastly overperform. Perhaps it is only a case of perception. As it is the combo has a certain Axe feel about it. As I posted a few pages back it too was brutal in taking down Posi 1 and 2. It too had an early AoE which took a FF proc and an early BU. But I have no real complaints so far other than the combo will need Quills and Throw Spines to finally get an identity. It's just difficult to judge a secondary when Fire Armor carries so hard. On the other hand it's great to play with concepts since we know it's not going to be a slog.

Just a small update on the Ice/Bio. Definitely very squishy. Ablative helps but gets, well, ablated. Without the defenses all in place I found I actually died three times during Citadel. Yeah... against Council. Shamefur dispray! But also because my amplifiers had run out and I wasn't Ice Patching. Once I started dropping Ice Patch at the start of the fight no more deaths. But it was a case of going in, getting whittled to half during the alpha, then try to squeeze another AoE and during the 2.5 seconds getting the other half whittled down by the post alpha before I could use DNA Siphon or Ablative. The damage is as good as expected from a Scrapper paired with Bio on top of. Even at Manticore it wasn't uncommon to have a PP pop their T9 after BU + Freezing Touch + Frost + Frozen Aura. Needless to say the pack of mobs was mostly dead as well. Frozen Aura is a godsend to finish up moping enemies because leveling with a single AoE is sad (still better than none, eh Super Strength?). I decided to remove the critical proc from Ice Sword and place it on FT so it is less awkward to use. In an AoE situation I want to use FT - Frost - FA, not use Ice Sword. This means the proc won't be available at the very low levels and that FT won't be buffed by it, but it means the lower damage skills will get a damage boost where FT already hits hard enough by itself. The slotting of DNA Siphon is still malleable. I'm not sure how useful the Theft of Essence ends up being considering how good DNA is at replenishing the blue bar, or how useful the healing it gets from Panacea though it doubles as a second heal. The bonuses from Panacea are crappy where six slotting Synapse Shock has much better bonuses, but do we really need more endurance? In long ST fights we're going to suffer anyway and may need to use a Recovery Serum either way. So, dunno. Slightly altered build. Last I played it was soloing Manticore's TF which was going fine though I ended up dying from more burst. Even with the defenses mostly in place they remained porous.

One of the very very last combos I had yet to try: Fire/Spines. I haven't actually started on it because I keep staring at it from all angles and trying to decide whether it is worth the attempt or not. It does have an early FF-able AoE like Martial Arts, and it does have an early BU like Ice so it's a mix of both worlds. But the ST is weaker even just comparing to Martial Arts... but it does have a second damage aura which will narrow the gap. Hrrm... I'm not sure yet whether to go for it or not. I've started by drawing from my experience with Fire Melee and ditched Spine Burst. It's a carbon copy of Combustion with the glacial 3.2 animation and damage so low it would not kill a clockwork's Gear. With a different primary this might matter more but having Burn it makes no sense (IMO) to keep such a trap as Spine Burst. Then I got rid of Impale. It is the hard hitting skill but by the time it has animated I can do Barb Swipe and Lunge instead and have done more damage (Impale 328 damage VS Barb Swipe for 153 and Lunge for 253 = 406. 2.64 animation VS 1.85 + 1.05 = 2.90) while also making leveling and exemplaring much smoother. This leaves Ripper for ST and AoE. With an FF proc in it it will speed the build like Dragon's Tail does when in AoE. This is an obvious AoE bent build with Ripper, the second damage aura and Throw Spines, which is in turn a carbon copy of Shockwave but without the FF proc. But at this point I'm hrrrm-ing all over since I ditched Shockwave in my Claws build, so doesn't that mean having a second cone would just have me park it as well? Perhaps Shockwave being 90º and Throw Spines being 180º (?!) will make a difference. But in my experience as much as we say CoH is an AoE game we don't need a lot of AoEs. By the time we have done two-three AoEs most things are dead and we are back to ST to mop up. In my experience with Axe, who also had an early BU and a FF-able early AoE, the build ought to melt low level content. It does lack either the defensive Ice Patch or Storm Kick for the end game. I'm unsure how much survival the -recharge actually adds though lots of AoE and killing fast has always been the best defense.

Just to give some slotting ideas I'll post something with a frankenslotted Rad Siphon. In regards to flopping I'm not sure which is better. There might be something to be said for using both though it may lead to mobs being knocked back instead of down if both activate at the same time. As it is I've just added both in. You're making an effort to cap out Fire/Cold defenses but they aren't common. Energy/Negative is much more common and wasn't as high as it could be. If you feel you want more F/C you can scrounge a slot from somewhere and add a 6th Avalanche to cap that out too. I honestly don't feel that Rad has a lack of AoE that it needs to be propped by the epic pools. Just by hitting things with your ST attacks you're triggering mini AoEs. So because of that and Fire/Cold not being super important I'll take Lightning Ball out. It's just a suggestion though if you feel like trying it on the PTS you can see if you feel the lack of that extra damage. In exchange those slots will go to Fusion and Hasten which ought to improve your damage regardless. I've scrounged a bit on the recovery because of DNA Siphon and Recovery Serums being so cheap. For regular play DNA Siphon at every spawn will keep you topped off, it is the long ST fights where your endurance might hurt.

Not nearly enough. My friend list is an ocean of grey which means I nearly have to break the ice and start from scratch every two weeks. It comes to a point I'm as content to be browsing the web while tabbed out and just check if someone approached or a friend logged on. Which is in no way conducive to RP, but breaking the ice over and over gets (got) tiring. This reflects in my ability to keep a character. I used to RP a character for years and years. Now the most it lives is a couple of months before I start a new one trying to capture the early RP fun.

Bio swims in endurance so using a slot in Radiation Siphon for a Theft of Essence is a crime indeed. But a minor one. It can be frankenslotted for damage and healing instead. Bio is squishy, so some extra floppage by having Overwhelming/Avalanche's proc isn't bad. But still go for Barrier as a panic button because Bio will cruise most easy content and then crumble when facing harder foes. Degenerative 75% damage change is the best middle ground Interface. Reactive's -res does actually close to nothing in all content. Mobs die too fast for the minor -res to stack and AVs resist the small -res effect plus level difference nullifies it some more. Reactive's better numbers come simply from the 75% chance for medium DoT. Both Degenerative work on AVs helping to kill them faster, and the 75% chance to do the minor DoT helps a little bit. Not as much as Reactive, but Reactive only helps for one segment of gameplay. This isn't a 'trust me', it's simple to use the PTS and do a farm map using one and the other and compare times. The 'choose the higher % because it will fail' has been fixed a few patches back. You have done sacrifices to push S/L resistance as high as possible, but I would have gone for reaching 40% defense to S/L and E/N. With Barrier that would be 45%. Not being hit is just better if we consider that being hit brings debuffs with it. I started messing a little bit with the build but there was no way I could respect your goals to reach as high S/L so I gave up.

Maybe you ought too obtain the code and make your own server where you can work on what you think is important. I'm not telling you to leave HC. But I am saying the owners of the server decided to work on this because they thought it was important. Once you have your own server you can work on what -you- think is important.

Yep. I've started th character, currently level 17 on redside, and from level two I've cranked the difficulty to x4 with bosses. Not gonna lie that there were moments where I went deep into the red, but Ice Patch in the middle of a spawn and then pew pew until everything is down hasn't failed me. No deaths yet and now I got Ablative so maybe x6.

Point.

Finished with the tinkering. Mids does not activate the -7.5% res from having Offensive Adaptation on. I cross referenced the database with the Tanker version that does work and saw that all the -7.5% effects did not have the 'self' tag. That change is all that's needed. For most things the build should be fine but a FF proc somewhere sure would be nice. With Offensive on the 15% resistance to E/N is going to hurt with things that bypass (ITF fluffies) or debuff defense (any lobster and most end game robots) with the quick nature of combat helping the Scrapper since it can kill fast and Ablative can be used nearly every spawn. Ice Patch will do a lot to help as well and Barrier is the panic button. I also had a very elegant 70% S/L resistances for Barrier to finish capping but once having fixed the database the best I could put it up to was 64% So with Barrier 69%. I could squeeze in a few more % for S/L but I don't feel it will improve the build. 40% to S/L/E/N for Barrier to finish capping. I probably have too many slots dedicated to recovery. The slots from Physical Perfection and Stamina can probably be recovered, maybe even from Health, but there isn't a lot to use them with that ought to really impact the build. Probably dump them in Focused Accuracy for another 3% E/N resistance. This isn't the 'most optimal solo scrapper', just something I'm working on. I'd still say a Fire/Ice or Fire/Martial Arts Tanker though I'm so biased I should be taken with a grain of salt.

We'll have to compare notes. Currently tinkering with a build.

I just want to say it is common knowledge that most attacks be them ranged, melee, or AoE, have a Smash component. Bullets or arrows are Lethal. Punches or hits with blunt (punches, hammers, rocks, whatever) are Smash. But most energy, negative, and even psi or sonic, do part damage in Smash. Which means that each attacks gets two defense rolls: one for Smash and one for the energy type. If either of the defensive rolls works then the attack is completely negated. Thus a high S/L defense protects against more than you'd give it credit.

Same. Did it on Ice/Bio Stalker and it was my main for a while. Eventually I just got too addicted to crits. Any non crit hit was a let down and then mobs just ran away when at low health. But though Stalker brings AS to the table I find using Frost in Freezing touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword to be a very forgiving and simple rotation without GiS. Now I don't know how well it plays since this was in the dark times of near 4 seconds Ice Patch so it was used strategically, where now it can just be dumped as (nearly) part of the rotation. As for Fire Melee, well, it does not invalidate your pleasure in playing it, but it is a bit crappy when compared to the other sets. Combustion is super slow and does such bad damage it can't even kill the little gears that come out of clockwork (the extra wide radius makes up for it, but not enough IMO), Fire Breath is so narrow it barely hits anything on top of having bad damage (the lack of care in balancing things like 'hits everything around AoE so it should do less damage VS cones only hit part of the enemies around us so it should do more damage') leaving Fire Sword Circle to do all the work. The single target is also low-ish. I believe this to be a holdover from the time where Fiery Embrace from Fire Armor would buff it since Fire Melee is the sole fire based attack set. But in the meanwhile Fiery Embrace was changed and I don't think Fire Melee got a pass (all back in live). This is a very dead horse we are hitting, but sets with absolutely no secondary effects should do more damage to compensate. As it is FM has no knockdowns, no slows, no stuns, and the small DoT chance is not enough to make it better. Lets just look at Energy Melee after the last pass. Two decent AoEs, the very best ST damage, and on top of it it is so chockful of stuns that even AVs can stagger drunkenly. Or Ice Melee. Comparable damage to Fire Melee, a very nice AoE in Frost and complemented by Frozen Aura, a hard hitting Hold in Freezing Touch, and then Ice Patch. CoH isn't such a min maxed game that only the cream of the cream is worthy of being played, but after a while we realize Fire Melee just lacks oomph. About a year ago there was some noise about giving it a pass but nothing happened.

Fire melee is icky. Definitely Ice Melee though. But Deuce speaks true in everything including that you need to know what you want. I find my Fire Armor Tankers the best to solo in since Burn shrinks dramatically the distance between Scrapper damage and Tanker damage and it starts straight at level 18. If you're looking for hardcore soloing you'll need something sturdy, but if you're just aiming for something like Council then you don't need that. Personally I'm about to try Ice/Bio since I'm figuring the new Ice Patch will make a nice difference in a Scrapper's squishyness, but Fire Armor spoiled me rotten.

As you've realized Ice Armor is like Stone Armor and a bit outdated. Not impossible to work with because the game is not -that- hard but there are better options. For theme it is not bad and definitely pairing it with Ice Melee fixes part of the problems. If the enemies start flopping with Ice Patch it gives time for the defense debuffs to elapse. One of the problems with Ice Armor is that it does not help killing faster either. It was like my experiment with Shield. I had much better defenses than my usual Fire Armor, but I took so long to kill stuff (early/mid levels) that I died more often than I did on a Fire Armor character. In the same way I've soloed the ITF on a squishy Fire Armor on a pure basis of 'kill them so fast that they don't hurt back because they are dead' which ends being a defense in itself. Unfortunately it has also spoiled me because I can't do other combos. Everything just feels slow and 'tanker damage' with me whittling things. This is the point of view of a soloer/self sufficient Tanker, not a 100% Tank team-kills-while-my-job-is-surviving-and-grabbing-agro. Other things you've noticed is how Ice Armor is no longer the agro magnet it used to be a few patches ago. I don't remember exactly what was changed but remember others who played Ice Armor noticing it. For a regular team this is fine though. Now the good news is that Ice Melee has no particular downsides. The damage is just a bit worse than other options if at all but not hugely so (both my Claws and martial Arts have the same 4-minutes-without-using--res-procs pylon times), the AoE is good and obtained early, Build-up is obtained early as well and allows to both speed things up and also punch through some walls like Circle of Thorns, while Ice Patch is a very nice extra layer of protection. Overall I'm close to ranking Ice Melee as overall best set Tankers get with Martial Arts as most defensive (allowing even resistance based armors to reach 45% defense to melee/ranged/AoE). When I soloed the ITF it was on the Martial Arts. I'm probably doing it again on the Ice Melee just to compare notes. Which brings my monologue to an end saying that MA is definitely something you can also look into. Adding +10% defense allows for a buffer against debuffs and MA is also chockful of CC between KDs from the AoE, KD from Crane Kick and stuns from Crane Kick.

?

Pretty much and why MA is solid in first place. The 45% defense to everything is invaluable too. The only thing keeping it down is the lack of Build until 28. A pity Taunt and BU could not swap places. Ice Patch doesn't do miracles like when I randomly joined a team and just us three tried to take down Arachnos one time and Carnie the other. At +2x8 we got creamed and not even inspirations or Ice Patch saved the day. Granted that I was lvel 40 and my slotting unfinished, but it is as I said about Ice Patch not being the miracle worker.

Yes, Nihilli is pretty spot on. Most of the time the ones who can't handle a pylon's damage are the squishies and some people will rely on purples to achieve a complete run. But the remainder of the time it is simply a case of 'I'd never play wihtout Clarion but I took Ageless' or 'I took Waterspout for the -res'. Most of the time the usual concession for pylon runs is slotting the dubiously useful -res procs into the attacks that take them. A set that can have these will blow past all others which is why some combos were so broken. Bio Armor in particular adding to it. In actual gameplay my own tests told me their effects were pretty minimal compared to the largess in results they show on a pylon. I digress. Anything that handles a pylon is going to be decently sturdy even if not super min maxed for survival.