Hjarki

You're getting a lot of 'play a Controller' advice because Thermal is almost purely a support set that provides minimal benefit to the user. As a result, it comes in handy to bring your own team to support with you - a la pets. If you're willing to wait a bit, you might want to try out Electrical Affinity (currently on Beta server) - it has the sort of support focus you want but in a more solo-friendly package. That being said, I'd probably do Illusion/Electrical rather than Electrical/* Defender.

Inarguably, there are a lot of people playing outside the framework of Incarnates/maxed out builds. However, discussions of such play tend to run afoul of two problems: Lack of clear guidelines. It's fairly easy to have a discussion about 'best possible builds'. But there's an endless set of possibilities for 'best possible builds under restrictions X, Y and Z'. Without first agreeing on what precise restrictions you're placing on builds, you can't really discuss them. Not terribly informative. I can tell you how a build will play at level 10. Or you could just go out and play for an hour or two to find out for yourself. A lot of the emphasis on discussing endgame builds comes from the fact that the effectiveness of a build once you've got all the pieces in place is difficult for people to predict from low level experience. Most people who are approaching a build from the standpoint of effectiveness really want to know about the complete arc of the game - and they don't want to invest significant amounts of time only to discover that the end of the arc isn't where they want to be. Assuming you're not just playing with the same group of friends all the time, I think most players find it incredibly frustrating to play Hawkeye when everyone else around them is Iron Man and The Hulk - you're essentially just a spectator in someone else's game.

I think it's an overall solid set. I'd note: Shock seems like a "power tax" that non-Defenders are forced to take. Swapping it with Rejuvenating Circuit seems reasonable. It might also be worthwhile to explore making it a 'chain' power to fit thematically with the rest of the set. Empowering Circuit might work better with a stacking mechanic where the individual buff is smaller, but the buffs can stack to some larger total to permit better scaling across the levels. Energizing Circuit's massive, short duration recharge buff is likely to run afoul of recharge caps on many builds. +50% for 12 sec would be equivalently powerful, but more consistent and less likely to run into this issue. Galvanic Sentinel is the big issue in my mind. The problem I have is that this power only exists to provide a target for the other powers while the player is solo. As an independent power, it's essentially worthless. Indeed, it's actively counterproductive in a group setting (since it consumes bounces that would be better placed on players). It seems like the power should either be useful in its own right or there should be some other mechanic to ensure solo pet-less players can use the chain effects.

I have a slightly different take on the value of Leadership. When I look at level 50, what I really see is that players have largely solved their own problems without your help. So if you're going to play a Force Field Defender, you shouldn't be doing it because you expect other people will need Defense buffs - you should be doing it because it's part of how you solve your problem with Defense. There are a very few areas where players aren't going to be able to reach the various caps on their own (-resistance, +damage, obscure defense/resistances like Toxic/Psi/End Drain/etc.). But most of what you provide is really about supporting yourself - the one player you know needs those buffs - rather than supporting other people. So my decision about Leadership tends to devolve into asking some fairly specific questions. Do I need the Defense and Hit? Do I need the LotG slotting opportunities? The fact that I can boost the abilities of others with these powers is potentially nice. But I don't ever expect them to have a meaningful impact in that respect. I tend to agree. On a Defender Blast set, I'm normally going to have a 3 power single target rotation. Due to how much time needs to be spent on support set activities, this doesn't need to be a tight rotation like a Blasters but can have some slack time built in. Depending on power set, this 'single target' rotation might also include AE powers. At least two pool powers - Dominate and Char - make a frequent appearance in this three power rotation. Beyond that, I'm likely to take the ultimate. I will usually take Aim (or its equivalent) as well. Taken together, this means I usually take the one forced power as either a mule or an unslotted/unused power and usually a total of 5 powers from Blast set. Such simple rules are obviously impossible for the diversity of support sets. However, I tend to take powers that buff my own defenses/resists/recharge/damage, resistance debuffs and (effective) damage powers. Ultimately, this ends up being between 5 - 7 powers including one of the two forced powers (which more often than not end up being mules rather than a core part of the build @50). Basically, if it's not something I'll be using in virtually every fight - whether solo, group or league - I'm probably going to skip it.

I ran with Storm/Sonic for a while before shifting over to other options. The issue with Sonic is that you pay an enormous penalty both in terms of base damage but also in terms of procs for those innate -res debuffs. This means that options like Beam, Pistols and Water will out-damage Sonic even accounting for the benefits Sonic applies to your Storm-based powers. You can stack up more -res with Sonic than you can with procs slotted into the sets I mentioned, but the marginal value just isn't high enough. Beam is also nice for single target due to the -regen (which Storm doesn't bring) and Water's AE is amazing.

My attitude on 'tier lists' is that they're primarily useful for helping people understand what happens in endgame. Unfortunately, CoH changes radically across the levels. Sets that look fantastic when you're level 14 often end up being mediocre at level 50 with full IO sets - and sets that look terrible at 14 often end up being fantastic in the same position. So when you're first starting out, it's easy to pick the 'wrong' set for what you want based solely on low level perceptions. The primary reason I see Time as being a 'tier above' Radiation is that you get recharge bonus from both sets, but Time also gives you the massive defense boost. In contrast, most of Radiation's debuffs aren't terribly useful against very tough opponents - they certainly don't provide the near-invulnerability Time does.

I do believe the game is both 'too easy' and 'too hard'. Some thoughts on how to address this without completely changing the underlying mechanics of the game: IO set bonuses would stack to some number less than 5. Even unique might be reasonable here. Change the recharge on the first two powers of Blast and Melee sets to 1 sec. This would give most starting characters a complete single target rotation even in early levels. Remove Hasten. This power warps the game too much. Increase defense values from pool powers (perhaps double) but allow players to only receive a single defense bonus from pool powers. So if you have both Combat Jumping and Maneuvers, you'd only get the higher of the two bonuses. Reduce the recharge of long recharge powers substantially. Due to #3 and #1, it wouldn't be unreasonable to reduce them by up to half. While this wouldn't solve all of the problems, it would generally make the leveling curve a bit smoother and make the top end less potent.

When last I tested it, the Soulbound Allegiance proc in Tornado would affect the player when you first cast it but otherwise just affect pets (if it proc'd during normal operation). Also, Tornado is a pet while Lightning Storm is a pseudo-pet, so there are some subtle differences between the two. In any case, part of the value of Soulbound Allegiance is that it's a purple set (and thus compresses greater benefits into fewer enhancements) that you wouldn't otherwise be able to use.

Tornado: A relatively standard configuration for this would be the procs from Force Feedback, Overwhelming Force, Soulbound Allegiance and Achilles' Heel; back this up with D and D/E from Soulbound Allegiance. This gives you a maximum damage Tornado with near-automatic procs when you activate it (you also receive a fairly small chance to proc every 10 sec). Lightning Storm: Similar to Tornado, this really begs for a Force Feedback proc. Shout or Screech, not both: You only have room for one of these abilities in your attack chain. Screech is probably the better choice. Howl/Shockwave: You can set up a fairly strong AE rotation with these two abilities. However, I'd strongly recommend investing in range for these abilities. Overall, I think you might benefit from looking over the Storm Summoning thread. There's a long conversation that includes a lot of useful information about Storm Summoning Defenders/Corruptors.

I haven't fired up CoH for a few months. When I try to start up, it gives me a dialog box with the message "Couldn't change to fullscreen. The graphics mode is not supported. Setting game to 800x600 windowed mode.". I then hit 'ok' and it appears to start up normally. However, it only displays the top left of the login splash screen. It appears to be working, but I can't enter username/password (because they're not on screen).

All of the newer sets tend to have considerable advantages not only in terms of better proc opportunities but also lower recharge ultimates. That being said: Disintegrate is both necessary and a fairly weak attack. Taking and slotting a single target attack that you need to open with and you never want to use more often than is necessary to re-apply the debuff is a big cost to the set. Disintegrate also accepts nothing but standard procs. Disintegrate spread is not a viable mechanic. It has an incredibly narrow radius and, even under ideal circumstances, doesn't affect enough targets to be worthwhile. Second attack much stronger than first. The first's special ability is extra -regen (not terribly necessary) while the second's is extra damage. No decent backup AE. The ultimate is one of the best out there - ranged, with a low recharge. However, the secondary AE is either a cone or the aforementioned Disintegrate mechanic. No AE knockback. AE knockback with Force Feedback is incredibly potent, and it's a major feature of both Water and Pistols - but not Beam.

Spines/* and Rad/* are really the standout farmers for one simple reason: they have toggle damage auras in primary. This not only means they tend to do more AE damage than other primaries, but you can more effectively farm while afk - you can just stand in the middle of a crowd and come back when they're dead. */Fire is more easily replaced. FIre's main advantage is Burn. However, you can re-purpose a number of mid-to-long recharge abilities with a lot of damage procs to make them into effective PBAoE nukes. As long as your secondary has a damage aura as well, Fire Armor isn't necessarily. It isn't even necessary for fire farms since capping Fire Resist is so easy with purple/winter sets. However, the investment required for a fire farmer who isn't Fire Armor will be significantly greater. There are also non-Fire farms. If you're building a non-Fire farmer, you might as well just build for S/L farms (there are also Energy, Cold, etc.) - especially given that there are S/L 'farms' in actual missions (there aren't any reasonable fire farms outside of AE).

There is definitely a balancing act between optimizing offense and accumulating sufficient defense. A lot of this discussion is just examining the "proc value" of certain abilities in isolation because it's useful to know that information. It's useful to know that information because it allows us to avoid a situation where we 'over-stat' in useless ways and instead design optimal builds based on whatever criteria we like. It allows us to get a better impression of the actual value of accuracy, defense, etc. - in comparison to the offensive trade-offs being made. And, yes, there are many 'proc monster' builds that are legitimately 'monster' builds - with incredible defenses paired with incredible offenses. That's an issue with Mid's/Pine's. If you select a power with a Force Feedback proc, it simply adds +100% global recharge since it has no realistic way to calculate the average recharge bonus over time. In practice, the FF procs in Tornado/Lightning Storm are probably going to deliver +50% to +60% average recharge or so. When you consider that you probably selected powers specifically for the ability to trade off one slot for +7.5% recharge via Luck of the Gambler, that's clearly a potent move. It's especially potent when you consider how hard it is to slot for non-LotG recharge (since it normally only comes on 5/6-slot set bonuses). In the current Incarnation of my Storm/Water build, I generally get out no more than 2 Tornado/Lightning Storm. However, when I was running Spiritual, I could get 3 somewhat consistently. That's pretty good for having virtually no purple sets slotted to 5.

I don't believe it's all that 'highly specific'. On Live, the kinds of 'late game' builds I'm talking about took a long time to develop. On Homecoming? I'd say they're the norm at higher levels. It's not just me and a few of my elite friends - I'm not even all that 'elite'. It's virtually every PI mission team I see, where you've got characters who could solo the x8/+4 content but bring others along. People play the game in a variety of ways. But I don't see any virtue in sticking your head in the sand and pretending that the 'late game' I'm talking about doesn't exist - or that everyone will eventually reach the point where they're playing alongside such builds.

I suppose it depends on what you're trying to optimize. If you absolutely want to play Kinetics and are looking for the best pairing... I'd probably choose a Controller/Mastermind. While Corruptors have a higher +damage cap, Fulcrum Shift only really pays off when you're spreading its benefits across multiple targets rather than just yourself. If you're just buffing your own damage, there are a host of ways to do it more safely and easily. Even in terms of Corruptor vs. Defender only, it's not entirely certain the Corruptor is better. The higher +damage cap is useful, but reaching reasonable defensive totals on the Corruptor is sufficiently difficult that you might throw away this advantage entirely by the need to slot excessively for defense. When I first started playing again, I had all the same preconceptions everyone else did from Live. However, I slowly learned that the old rules had changed - previously excellent sets were now merely adequate while previously overlooked sets were fantastic. Kinetics is one of those "now merely adequate" sets. Even before you address the changes from Live, Beam Rifle is an example of a better single target set. Once you start in on the PPM changes, Fire loses an enormous amount of ground in favor of sets that can slot multiple procs (at least for Corruptors). For Corruptors/Defenders, the newer sets - Water, Beam and Dual Pistols - tend to be the standouts due to the low cooldown ultimates and plethora of slotting options. The standard model for Scourge is +30% damage. In practice, this dramatically overvalues Scourge. Bear in mind that most of your damage came from the process of killing off all the minions/lieutenants and damaging the bosses - which didn't benefit from Scourge. So you're probably only talking about 25% of your damage that can Scourge. Further subtract all that damage that can't Scourge (most damage outside of your primary, procs, etc.). You're left with a small portion of damage, against targets which just don't have enough hit points to usefully Scourge in many cases. Remember, for Scourge to be useful, the target not only has to be below half health but have health above the size of your nuke. The majority of Scourge procs you see against standard enemies (not AV/GM) will simply be overkill - you would have done sufficient damage to kill them even without Scourge.

This isn't quite true. Blast sets are primarily about burst AE damage - the damage cycle does virtually everything in the first few seconds and drops extremely fast after that. In practice, this means your Fulcrum Shift'd Corruptor can't hope to match Aim/Build Up/Gaussian's on the Blaster for such purposes (especially since Scourge is useless on opening attacks). Moreover, the need to Fulcrum Shift before the damage is dealt is a huge limitation as it disrupts the spawn and exposes the user to an alpha strike. The other major type of fighting - single target damage - doesn't really benefit all that much from Fulcrum Shift due to the lack of targets. It's still useful, but not enough to overcome the Blaster's inherent advantages. In terms of the value of support, you are correct - the Corruptor would be better than the Blaster for that purpose (except for certain very carefully crafted Blasters that are designed for farms). However, what would be better than both would be another Brute. A farming Brute runs around +325% damage, meaning that Fulcrum Shift can only increase their damage by 82% even shoving them to cap (and it does nothing for aspects like procs, so it's even less of a multiplier than that). In contrast, another identical Brute would exactly double the damage. That identical Brute would also have a much better chance of not dying in an intensive farm. The other side is the comparison with Defenders. It's a bit odd to say, but if you want to play a Corruptor you should play a Defender instead and vice versa. The basic principle here is that if your support set is really good at amplifying damage, you're generally better favoring it over your blast set (and vice versa). When you look at the highest damage combinations of Blast Set + Support Set, they're almost invariably Defender builds rather than Corruptor builds. However, if you're interested in playing a more purely 'support' role, this tends to work better as a Corruptor because your damage will be solely dependent on your Blast set. And, of course, the argument could be made that when you talk about the really pure 'support sets', those work better as Controlers/Masterminds (who bring their own party to support with them).

I think that Psi, Ice and StJ are the primary candidates for 'best single target dps', but I haven't sat down to run the numbers to compare. Bio is most likely the highest dps due to its damage buffs (Shield also has them, but they only work in a crowd). That being said, the recharge buffs in other secondaries might prove more useful in your final build.

It's relevant in this case because the numbers we're talking about are too low to be effective 'burst'. Activating all of these proc'd-out long recharge powers would still leave most of the minions standing - as opposed to the burst attacks from Blast sets, which wipe out all the minions (and potentially the lieutenants with some builds). So you're really talking about using those abilities repeatedly over time - they're Fireball, not Inferno.

In my classification, the builds you're talking about would constitute 'mid-game' builds, so I'm not sure more layers are really needed. I think discriminating between a fully-developed and not-fully-developed game situation is useful. If you're never planning to play in the 'late game' category, then you can safely ignore discussion of that. But I can almost guarantee if you're a level 50 running your Invention IO-only build, you're going to find groups where you just feel useless with builds that have no real 'late game' option attached to them. You're going to watch near-invulnerable powerhouses do everything while you desperately try to keep up.

In the 30 sec recharge Dark Regeneration, you have a 57% proc chance for non-purple procs. If you place 6 of them, you'll end up with an average of 247 damage. At perma-Hasten, this yields 22.7 dps. At +150% damage, Death Shroud deals 11.1 dps. Each proc you non-purple proc you slot into it would yield another +4.2 dps. However, if you eat reds or have other damage buffs, the damage aura rapidly out-performs Dark Regeneration. You can also slot two procs into Cloak of Fear (for 8.4 dps). Radiation Therapy does slightly worse than Dark Regeneration - the 6 proc method would yield a dps of 17.8 dps (largely due to proc chance capping). Beta Decay is a bit better than Cloak of Fear (3 procs for 12.6 dps). Ground Zero yields another 11.8 dps (again, proc chance capped), the major advantage being the larger target cap. So they're roughly equivalent, but Dark has better upside with buffs. In terms of endurance, this is largely a non-issue with Ageless. Bio Armor has similar potential with its AE. However, none of this comes close to what you're doing with primary. The cumulative from Radiation Armor (42.2 dps) is beaten by Whirling Smash alone (54.5 dps) with Armageddon + 3xnon-purple.

Dark Armor has a PBAoE damage-heal on a 30 sec recharge and two auras, so it's a strong candidate as well. However, the Armor sets in general aren't nearly as important as the melee sets in terms of procs since most of their powers are simply auto or defensive toggles. Recharges longer than ~90 sec also tend to be a poor use of procs since they usually over-cap the proc chance. You also run into the where-do-I-put-the-ATO issue. You want your armor proc and you probably want your set bonuses from it - but the ATO set has so much recharge that 6-slotting an actual attack power will compromise its effectiveness, so the damage auras are normally a dumping spot for them.

Storm was arguably the first of the 'proc monsters' and much of the incentive for these threads came out of the discussion of Storm on the Defender forums. I think that Storm is fairly well 'solved' at this point and what it brings to the table well-understood (at least for those who have followed these discussions all along) - which is likely why Myshkin didn't really put much emphasis on it. I also think that players are tempted to tack it onto everything else because it is so powerful - even when it's not necessarily all that synergistic (such as with Fire/Storm). Fire isn't discussed much because there aren't many (unique to Fire) opportunities there. It's powers don't really interact with procs in particularly special ways - about the closest it gets to such an interaction would be Overwhelming Force in the Imps (due to the triple attacks). Hurricane can take a lot of procs, but it can't do all that much useful with those procs due to the Repel. Even if it didn't have Repel and you could just leave enemies sitting in the Hurricane, it would still only proc at the 'normal' rate. As a persistent toggle, that might be decent enough. But it's not going to deliver exceptional performance. -25% recovery is, frankly, not very useful (in PvE). Either your enemy is going to resist it heavily or you simply don't care that they can't re-use an attack that probably wouldn't come off cooldown before they died anyway.

It's Fire secondary, which has both a damage aura and an ability called 'Burn' which drops a short DoT damage patch. Farming Brutes would normally use Fire Armor combined with Spines or Radiation for primary if they want maximize continuous AE dps. Note: I mean Fire primary for Tankers. I was thinking Brutes.

I didn't really 'skip the fact'. Hurl Boulder is a better attack than X-Ray, but X-Ray brings -def and apoc proc. Nor, in fact, is it a build I would play since it largely disregards durability (while it's still a Tanker, it doesn't have the kind of comprehensive defenses you'd really want on a Tanker) - it's more proof-of-concept. I'm not sure I agree with your 'whole point' either. We're really looking for key features, not the whole set - indeed, as I've mentioned with Titan Weapons, being force into set-specific mechanics can actually be a hindrance. In terms of the lower tier powers, they're mostly all the same proc-wise. Any melee attack has plenty of slotting options - unlike Blast sets, you don't need specific secondary effects to get enough procs. That's why I made that breakdown of what was actually meaningful (purple procs, KB AE, -resist procs and slow recharge first power). What other significant distinctions do you believe exist?

That's why I made a distinction about three phases of the game. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade here. You should play what you enjoy in the way you enjoy playing it. However, when we talk about how 'good' a set is, we're generally not talking about the mid-game and we're definitely not talking about the early game - because people have direct experience with that. What we're normally talking about is how it performs beyond what we can easily tell from even briefly playing the set - the pitfalls we'll run into when you get into the final stages of the game. For example, I know a guy who runs fire farms with 5 identical Brutes. Individually, these Brutes aren't able to clear a fire farm particularly well. However, when you're putting them all in the same place on auto-follow, they work great because they all have Leadership - and the guy designed around the fact that he'd have 5 stacking Leadership buffs. Having that knowledge that they will *always* be used in this fashion gives you significant advantages. Indeed, even the concept of the 'fire farm Brute' does this. As long as you know you will never have to face any non-fire damage, you can easily soft-cap Fire Defense and hard-cap Fire Resist on Brute. You may suck at dealing with any other form of content, but in that one place - the only place you'll ever be - you're a monster. The same could be said about more conventional characters. If your wife plays Empathy/Psi and you play Electric/Stone - and you never play except with each other - then your Electric/Stone Tanker can be built around the omnipresence of those Empathy buffs (and clearly they would be useful in that duo).