Sunsette

Forgot AVs can resist -regen. (I never had any debuffers in live.) Fire is definitely the king of soloing.

For Posi's, I usually skip Dam/Rech at 50 because I have ridiculous recharges and I like the extra range. Re: CJ/Stealth. The def bonuses are small, but they do really add up with enough of them. Two 50+5s and they're 2.75% defense to all, almost as good as those IOs. I'm generally not impressed with +dam set bonuses and ignore that they exist for the most part because they're dwarfed by effects like Musculature, but I don't feel that strongly about my opinion. You also don't need to slot Fly in Fly if you did -- can't remember. Just slot whatever you like, a lot of people put a Stealth IO here. You're very welcome. :)

It's a good question. You're right that Siren's Song is a sleep, and it's not particularly damaging, but it does in fact do damage too. Though for the record, I intended to include any non-damaging AoEs were there any, I just don't believe that there are any.

Updated to add a section on Force Feedback. It's possible I just talked myself into making an Energy Blast/Radiation Sentinel.

Would it be possible to see that build? I have my fire/rad sent doing 500 damage every 30 secs with unbuffed inferno and my water/bio doing 520 every 20 seconds with gyser. I am having problems getting the BR T9 to perform this well and I could definetly use some direction. I'll try to put one together for you later today but Pine's and the version of Mids Reborn I was last using -- haven't updated yet -- both had different serious bugs in BR's Refractor Beam that made it impossible to correctly slot my whole build. Off the top of my head though: +20% from Energy Aura +70% from Hasten +37.5% from LotG x5 +12.5% from Posi's Blast x2 +20% from Superior ATOs +10% from Apocalypse +10% from Ragnarok then consider the 5-set of Ragnarok is in Overcharged Shot boosted to +5s and I get like a 33s recharge time. (Sixth slot is Achilles' Heel for the Res debuff, I skipped the chance of knockdown in Armageddon). 275.15% recharge 125/3.7515 = 33.3 sec. Also seriously considered putting FF: Chance of Rech in Single Shot or Charged Shot -- but it's only like a 20% chance and no this is a terrible idea it's basically a coin flip across the period of the cooldown to get at least one active that reduces the cooldown by another 1.33s.

Couldn't have worked to well, as Apex and Tin Mage TFs were completed by Scrapper Only teams. Unless you're talking strictly iTrials, but then, aren't those over 8 member teams anyways? I didn't mean strictly so much as "being really anti melee in incarnate content in general was probably at least partly responsible for making sure Blasters didn't completely disappear from incarnate content in live." While CoX was never the most endgame focused, when you start adding an endgame and a whole type of class is invalidated in it, you risk people just dropping the class over your whole game. Auto hit is crude, yeah, but there's just no penalties for being a blaster at all in incarnate content. In WoW, there were general "anticaster" mechanics from the get go at all levels, just as there were general anti melee mechanics, even if none of these were great when first introduced. To me that makes incarnate content smack less of "interesting mechanic for the sake of it" and more "interesting mechanic meant as balance corrective for the game as a whole"

no, I'm pretty sure it's anti-melee. I just don't think it's undeserved. People would be pissed if their scrappers/brutes weren't miniature gods but there was also a weird design directive around constraining blasters, so the iTrial design people -- who, while not perfect, actually did have a grasp of engaging mechanic design -- came up with a crude but effective fix to ensure that you didn't have a repeat of eight scrappers running STF/LRSF. There's a lot of fundamentally weird or flawed gameplay decisions I'd never repeat from CoH base but I think their biggest one was the Scrapper/Blaster discrepancy and yet it's the one they were most stubborn about not really addressing. I say this from the perspective of someone who mostly played scrappers and brutes in live.

You're right, I was confused; the limit is lower normally. Normally 2 GB, right? Wouldn't full x64 be a lot harder?

I don't know much about programming, but I know that CoH is a 32-bit program, which means that, like most 32-bit programs, it's probably restricted to 4 GB of RAM. This restriction includes video RAM and would be responsible for a large amount of the slowdown the game faces in conditions which would not at all be conceivably challenging to most modern computers. I also know that while 32-bit executables can't normally get all the benefits of being x64, like multithreading, it is possible to make many of them Large Address Aware, which allows the executable to use all of the memory that the computer has available to it. This kind of dirty hack is most famously done for PC installments of games running on various forms of Bethesda's Creation Engine, like TES V: Skyrim. For that game it was a matter of flipping a handful of hex bits manually, but I know that's not the case for every 32-bit program. On the other hand, most games I've tried this with, we didn't have access to the source code. So, my question and suggestion: Is it feasible to make CoH LAA? It would be nice if so.

Disintegration effect lasts about 10 seconds. I don't have numbers on tidal power. BR catches up on AoE damage when you get to the T9; if you have enough global recharge, it does really obscene damage about every 30 seconds, as opposed to the standard Sent T9 doing fine damage every 25 seconds. Water also has better target caps. If you're really interested in AoE with the Sentinel, Water and Sonic are the strongest choices, imo, with BR, Fire, Ice, Dark and Elec coming in somewhere after it but still fine.

Beam/Bio will probably be the best for most of these. Bio's weaknesses are mostly cost and an extreme loss in power from exemping unless you maintain two builds. Beam is similar.

ugh, those goliaths are so boring. I like Apex so much more because Battle Maiden is a mobility/awareness check, everything about Tin Mage is the tanky-spankiest. Well, D11 isn't so bad I guess, and on the other hand, the first half of Apex is ALSO boring. Goliaths are boring! They look so cool but they're just brick walls that barely even hurt.

While a fair concern, with an 'every few hours' timer, it won't be very farmable. You'll have the ultra-diligent efficient levelers keeping track of what's happening on a timer and pop over 5 minutes beforehand to deck a demon in the schnozz and the rest of us will be all 'oh, snap, that's up? I'll go!" 10s after we logged in on our new level 1s.

This is a great idea, +1.

Hey, yeah, I totally get that. It's not really clear what you need to succeed when you're new to a playstyle or it's been a long time. Here's some general tips to help out, and also some questions. TIPS: - Try to build up your Smashing, Lethal, and Energy defenses to anywhere in the 33% to 50% range, the higher the better. (30s: I need to stay behind the tank or pop purple inspirations to do hard content; 40: I need a little bit of team support to do hard content; 45: I can solo a lot of content; 50: I can solo most content). Fighting and Leadership pools are great for this. - Make sure to slot Steadfast Protection +3% Def and Gladiator's Armor +3% Def -- they go in resistance slots. - Get as much recharge as possible from your IO sets. Consider getting Hasten if you don't already; Aim, Ice Storm, Blizzard, and Havoc Punch in Elec Mastery in particular benefit from it. Luck of the Gambler +Recharge is great in defense abilities. - Put your ATO sets in your single target attacks. When you can afford getting the Apocalypse set, put that in your best ST attack (Bitter Ice Blast). - If you grabbed Havoc Punch for your first Elec ability, 5-slot a damage set and put in Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge or Explosive Strike: Chance for Smashing Damage in the sixth slot. The former is better if you don't have a lot of recharge (200%+). - If you grabbed Electric Fences for your first Elec ability, 6-slot Enfeebled Operation (cheap) or 5-slot Gravitational Anchor (expensive) at your first opportunity for more recharge. - Make sure you have Performance Shifter in Stamina and at least one 50+5 End Mod there; make sure you have Panacea and Miracle or Numina's in Health. You probably won't want to dual-three slot. - You will most benefit from the Musculature Alpha Slot (probably). QUESTIONS: - Do you solo or group play more? - What are your goals with your build? - What's your budget? - Tell me about the concept. What travel powers, if any, do you use?

I still tend to hit defensive even in groups with good team support because I play Sentinels on permanent scrapperlock and go for the most high risk/high reward scenarios; I can't expect the support to risk themselves the same way, and because RNG can strike at any time, it's good to have the heals from Defensive already kicking in at the first opportunity, not panicking because I just lost 55% of my health bar and there's 12s until Energize comes back off of CD (the downside of having your heal also be your Endurance management ability). However, if I were the type to play more defensively and stay with the team -- absolutely. It does not take much team support for my Endurance to end up on the positive side, and I know if I got any sort of Ageless Destiny once my BR unlocks that slot, it'd solve all my end problem (but I'm probably going for either Clarion to make BR's various debuffs crazier or Barrier so I can comfortably +4/x8 Psi groups).

To add to this, most BR attacks have kind of a low base damage in the attack itself. Where they get their damage numbers up is that: - They have a source of -Res - They do bonus damage after the shot if they hit someone with the DoT first - Multiple attacks have -Def, meaning you can slot even more -Res in both your ST and your AoE - Their T9 is really damaging but still on a reasonably short cooldown and it's very easy to use. - Four AoEs and three of them are targeted spheres, the most convenient type. - Native large amount of -regen makes effective solo DPS against bosses and higher much better. I use Offensive Opportunity on occasion, because it's not useless, but with nine toggles it's very hard to argue with Defensive Opportunity as most of my choices.

I'd tried one at a time before. Also for anyone else trying this, CoH is actually openGL, so once I changed that it went from 'not doing anything' to 'CTDs immediately.'

Having trouble getting Reshade to work -- installed, set to DXD9. Set it to open on both cityofheroes.exe and homecoming.exe -- no dice. Something I'm missing?

Alright, so we're keeping powers as they are. Let's see here. I will recommend enhancement boosting a lot b/c it's an effective way to save slots. - Move a slot out of Stamina and into Health, put in Panacea proc. - On charged bolts, personally, I'd ignore the Chance of Hold IO and use Acc/Dam/End/Rech instead. Chance of hold can only affect a minion. I would also deeply consider putting Superior Opportunity Strikes here, since in general the single-target ranged sets aren't that good. - Your AoE defense isn't much, so I'd just keep Chance for -Res and swap the other five pieces out for Posi's Blast on Ball Lightning - I'd switch to two 50+5 generic health IOs on Charged Shield, and consider generic endmod if you're having any endurance problems at all. (Though I doubt it, you're toggle light.) - I prefer two or three 50+5 Heal/Recharge on Energize, frankenslotted - Try to get Gladiator's Armor in a resistance slot for another +3% Def - Aim really doesn't need a To-Hit enh -- I'd just use a generic +5 Recharge there, maybe two. - Some actual defense slotting in CJ would be beneficial. - There's no benefit in any of your flight enhancements. Fly is already over the non-afterburner speed cap with nothing in it. - Actual defense slotting in stealth would be good too. - Short Circuit is probably where you could best recover slots with boosting. Not sure you need six slots there with all the end drain you have.

As a general rule, I'm really skeptical of Reshade presets, but I actually think all of these screenshots do look a lot nicer! I will give this a try later, I'm not used to seeing a reshade preset add better shadows. In the first pair, you didn't change any of the settings in CoH the game proper at all? I'm going to try this out regardless, but if I may make a request: even really pretty ReShade presets often harm visibility in gameplay. I think it might be helpful to add comparison shots from dark environments where people often have trouble distinguishing characters from the background, like Arachnos lairs and Croatoa, to see how those look. I may do so myself when I get back to my computer.

BR has an even more interesting bug -- sometimes its chaining AoEs (Refractor Beam and Overcharge) count each chain as a separate hit for opportunity. All kinds of opportunity. Building opportunity, the small damage proc for using offensive opportunity, the healing and endurance recovery on defensive... I've had a few fights on +4/x8 where I basically heal to full every 3 seconds, opportunity drops, recharges and I'm back 2 seconds later.

The only time I've built a sent without them was an alt build of my concept without armor and with slightly more utility. If I'd made it as a separate character, I would have made them as a Blaster.

+1 for this.