Zewks

Thanks for filling in the (snarky) details for me. I mean, I admitted my ignorance in the post, I never played these sets. What I was mostly going on was watching others who WERE playing these sets, and how they seemed to always take a good chunk of time getting everyone all buffed up. Guess Ill pay more attention to exactly what they are doing next time 😛

(TLDR version in quote box) I dont play a lot of Defenders, corruptors, or controllers (or even MMs for that matter). A large part of this decision not to play them, is just the sheer amount of "prep time", and finagling with the controls and UI that has to be put in every 3-4 minutes of gameplay. I started my MMORPG experience with Asherons Call 1, so Im no stranger to "the buffing process". Casting all those short lived buffs on your character and then on each armor piece you had (head, chest, upper arms, lower arms, hands, legs, feet - unless you wore a full body robe which reduced this to just head, body, gloves and feet). Took you a solid minute (including potential spell buff fizzles) to fully buff yourself. Only to then jump into a dungeon for the 9 remaining minutes you had to try to fight a bit and still get out with the buffs just wearing off to repeat the process. Now CoH isnt quite this bad 😛 However, take something like Cold Domination. In a full group, thats 2 powers per person you have to cast every group member, for a total of 16 power usages. With cast animation and lag, its about 1.5 seconds per power usage. This means fully prepping your team is going to take a solid 24 seconds assuming you arent wasting any other time. And at lower levels, end can be an issue, causing you to pop some inspirations, or wait a few more seconds for end to recharge. And this is a process that you have to repeat every 4 minutes (or closer to every 3.5 minutes). TLDR: This would dramatically help with the slog of "prep time" required for these types of support powers (MM's might enjoy it as well), but it would still keep the normal single target powers useful for in combat situations. IE: Say the powers drop but people arent paying attention. Now its up to the support player to pull a clutch save and get the buffs up and running in the middle of combat, one at a time. Now this is just my personal opinion. I know id be much more willing to play these types of power sets if the "prep time" wasnt as annoying. Im sure others probably disagree, but it would still be interesting to hear thoughts from those with experience playing these sets, and those who might be staying away from them.

Nice, this is great info! Do you find ninja's struggling with no resists even though their defenses are soft capped? And for keeping Fortitude up on all 6 pets... thats basically having to buff a unique pet at least every 20 seconds if not sooner. Did you set up any sort macro to help out with this?

Seems to be some overall lack of balance between some of the pets based on those values. Specifically with Ninjas But thats just on first glance

The the pets types themselves dont get any inherent bonuses to defense compared to each other?

So from the idea of "Easiest to hit the defense softcap" to "hardest to hit it", how would you rank the different MM pet groups? IE: Undead, Beasts, Bots, etc).

I think this attempts to do what Ive felt has been missing for awhile in a lot of the help and guides that exist... Namely, targeting new players who are NOT level 35+, who dont have any money to twink their characters. A guide that doesnt just say "All builds are viable with the right enhancements and incarnates". So I appreciate what the OP is doing, but at the same time, I have to say, there are a couple of things I disagree with. 1. Enhancements. Hitting things A single Accuracy SO in each attack power/pet DOES make a difference. 33% isnt something that is trivial. Its hitting 1 time out of 3, in a situation where you would miss 100% of the time. Missing in this game just feels bad. Especially at low levels where you have so few attacks in your rotation. Hitting your targets is more important than boosting your damage. If you dont hit, you do 0 damage. At the very least, I recommend maintaining at least 1 of these SO accuracy enhancements on each power that needs to hit. Another area I feel does absolutely benefit from enhancement at low levels: Healing things Heals benefit from 2 enhancements even at levels below 10. - Recharge: Having at least one 33% recharge on a heal can make the difference of getting that clutch heal in time or getting killed. Most heals have at LEAST a 10 second cooldown, many have much longer. Reducing this recharge time by 33% is pretty huge. Even at 10 seconds, reducing it by 3 seconds means getting that heal off before another 1-2 attack hit you from just one enemy. - Heal: Again, being healed for more is nothing to turn away from. Means you can recover from a bigger attack better, and as a MM, this is extremely helpful with your Pets who should be taking the brunt of the damage. Much easier to heal a pet, than have to resummon and then rebuff that pet. Focusing just on these 2 areas specifically for enhancements (rather than none) will greatly smooth out your play experience at lower levels. 2. Stamina Rather than saying "Stamina doesnt matter, until it does", I think this should be focused more on giving the right tips. Stamina for many new players DOES matter right at the start, because they are doing things they dont realize arent very resourceful. IE: - Turn off your travel power in combat - Turn off sprint in combat - Dont use a toggle just because you have it, sometimes they arent even needed but will drain stamina and reduce its ability to regen. - Dont use AoE attacks against one target (or often even 2). AoE attacks take a large amount of stamina - If you ARE going to use a toggle power, its probably worth slotting at least one Endurance reduction enhancement on it to lower its cost by 33%. 2 is optimal, but at low levels for a new player, might not be feasible. All of these things can obviously be countered later in the game, with proper enhancements to reduce stamina usage, as well as improving stamina regen. But early on for a new player, these wont be reliable solutions.

First time really dealing with a level 50 blaster... just curious if the numerous amounts of experience out there has determined the best alphas for them, particularly for Water primary.

Just curious. Seems a lot of the various primary defense power sets give you either high defense, or high resist, but not both. Meaning you will need to pick up the slack for the stats that are lacking by using other means. While there are many ways to lessen damage done to you outside of resists/defense, my primary question here is simple: "When it comes to IO sets, which is easier to build for? Additional +Defense, or additional +Resists??"

Not real familiar with the mechanics of this, or pseudo pets. If someone is willing to explain, that was be appreciated.

These types of posts really need to be separated into 3 unique categories: 1. Playing 1 to 49 with no twinking 2. Playing at 50 without twinking or many incarnates 3. Playing at 50, fully decked out in min/maxed IOs and incarnates. Mostly because there is a HUGE difference between all 3 of these gameplay points. When you have someone suggesting advice for #3 when someone is looking for advice for #1 or #2, it ends up not being relevant or very helpful. Likewise, a level 50 (even without proper IOs) is going to play a lot different than a level 30, just because they have all their powers and slots. Much easier even with standard SOs to meet desired performance levels at 50 than it is at 30. Its important for all the Veteran players wanting to help, to better parse the info the person asking for help is giving to avoid this. For example, in this post: From that alone -- Rampant alt-o-holism: chances are they dont have many fully decked out characters, meaning probably not a lot of resources to min/max enhancements while leveling/playing alts. -- doubts they will get them to 50: This clues us into how they arent gonna be power leveling, and how they most likely wont be leveling super fast. Means they probably arent doing ramped up mission difficulties (certainly not +4/8). Means they most likely arent twinking their character as they play. These 2 things alone should help us steer our advice to things that are practical for the player. -- Classes/builds that are reasonable with unoptimized enhancements slotted (probably no IOs) -- Not having the full assortment of powers available to the class for a good portion of the gameplay. Early powers need to allow for smooth, survivable gameplay on their own. -- Not having soft capped defense/resists/recharge, etc. If the class isnt very tough or tanky on its own, probably not worth recommending. This rules out unhelpful advice like "Blasters with the right IOs can solo tank things just fine". I dont want to sound unappreciative of those wanting to help, but this has been a big frustration for myself in this game, getting advice that WAY overshoots the scope of what Im actually going to be doing in the game.

Maybe im missing something, but both in game and in Mids, it says Single Target

I find that playing a character, especially when leveling up, is an absolute chore when that character has little or no AoE damage output. At higher levels, especially in groups, when people are running +4/8, having 90% of your attacks be single target when there are 20 enemies grouped up around you, just feels bad. Curious how others cope or get around this limitation when running MA?

I've read all the farming guides, and most seem to be built around active/afk farming of AE missions. Even the active maps bore me. Id much rather do normal missions, but I understand that those have a vast variety of enemy types, damage types, etc, which makes it much harder to min/max a defense strategy against them. I also understand that there will probably always be at least one thing that a tank/brute is going to be hurt by. Knowing that, Im basically looking for a general build combo to handle 75% of what might get thrown at me in missions. Also something that is more actively played, rather than just standing there letting aoe do their procs. More budget friendly the better, as im not rich. Any suggestions?

This is my concern. If Corr is able to have the same end result as defender with its support/buff/debuff powers "capping" out, but still have higher dps, I question why anyone would choose defender? Regardless, I ended up going Dark/DP Defender. The Dark powers are fire and forget, but they have such long activation times that its usually a bit before I can start using my attack powers.

Im going to go against some of the suggestions and say DONT PLAY MASTERMIND. They have a really high learning curve, despite being able to do well solo. Especially to someone new to CoH, even more so to someone without much mmorpg experience. Im going to list out this quick and dirty which will probably be somewhat controversial to many vets: Blaster - Lots of damage, very squishy. Early on it will feel fine, mid game you may struggle with survivability as a new player. Hit and run gameplay. End game you can deck yourself out to face tank things as a vet player Defender - Weak blaster, lots of buffs and support powers, some of which dont help you solo because they are designed to help team members instead. Still, will be a bit easier to prevent getting killed, but it will also take longer to defeat enemies. Not recommended for early/mid game soloing (play in a group). As always, at end game, with enough resources, you can deck yourself out to solo/face tank most content. Corruptor - See "Defender" but boost the damage of your attack powers, and lower the buff/debuff/heal of your support powers some. Probably a bit easier to solo early game with than blasters or defenders due to having good damage and decent support powers. Controller - Do you like really REALLY long fights? As a controller, your damage is pitiful starting out and mid game as a new player. However, its very easy to stay alive because you can CC/lockdown numerous enemies at once, preventing them from attacking, moving, healing, etc etc. Another one of those "great for groups" characters. And, again (notice a trend here? Ill stop listing this because its the same for all classes), at end game, with enough resources, you can pretty much do good damage, and solo a lot of end game content. Dominator - Decent starting class. You can deal mid ranged damage, and have a good set of CC//control abilities like a controller, but thanks to the extra damage, fights arent putting you to sleep. Tanker - This is a good pick for a new player because it kinda puts the game on easy mode. You wont die much, and its a much more relaxed gameplay experience when soloing things at your own level. In the original game, your damage was pitiful, but on Homecoming, damage is respectable, allowing you to not only stand in a group of 10 enemies, but also kill them in a decent amount of time. You arent going to one shot things like a blaster, or melt bosses like a scrapper, but it should be a smooth leveling experience, especially if you remember to focus on your defense powers along with your attacks. Brute - See "Tanker" but lower the initial defenses a tiny bit, but buff damage a tiny bit. Also a great pick for starting characters Scrapper - See "Brute" but lower defenses more, and increase damage more. Not a bad choice for starting character, but you will need to be a bit more careful than tankers/brutes Stalker - See "Scrapper" but lower defense a tiny bit more, add in stealth, and increase damage from stealth attacks. Somewhat lacking in Area of Effect attacks due to stealth powers taking up power slots. Sentinel - Not a bad starting character. Its basically a weaker blaster as far as damage goes, but adds in defense powers allowing you to not be as squishy. MasterMind - As stated, high survivability, huge learning curve. To play optimally you will need to learn the games special keybind system to control your pets. Lots of resummoning them as they die frequently. Not recommended for people new to the game. Learn the basics, the UI, the game systems, etc, and then give MM a try. For the specialty classes like the widow and peacebringer, id say dont play these as a new player. They are very unique. My recommendation is to try them out after you know the game better and have experience on other classes. For a Brand new player, given the above info, my advice for which class to play starting out, mostly solo would be in this order: 1. Tanker/Brute 2. Scrapper/Sentinel 3. Dominator IMO, that will provide the least amount of struggle and frustration. Now... once you get some money, some experience about the game, some good enhancements/IO's, much of what I posted above can completely change. Also, playing in groups can change things as well, as you can lean on your team to make up for weaknesses you have when solo. And, as stated, at end game, with enough resources, most to all classes can be built and decked out to do most game content solo. But thats a LONG way from starting out as a new player.

One of the other COH servers had story archs scale to your level (up, not down). Id like that option, dont know about others. Not sure what downsides there would be. And, if Oro still existed, you could always just go and do those missions with your level scaled down as usual. Best of both worlds.

So Ive been pulling my hair out trying to compare these 2 concepts. The concept is simple. DP as the attack powerset, and any of the defender/corruptor support powers. Id be playing this character on a team. From what I can tell, Defender and Corruptor are like mirror opposites with the same power trees. Corruptor has higher damage, but lesser buff/debuffs, and Defender has higher buff/debuffs but lower damage. Factoring out Scourge for the corruptor and Vigilance for the defender, the base damage value differences seem to compare to the difference for the other power pool (debuffs/buffs) Corruptor - Pistols (1st DP power) : 41.71 damage (no scourge) Defender - Pistols: 36.15 (no vigilance) Corruptor - Poison - Envenom: -30% Res and Defense Defender - Poison - Envenom: -40% Res, 37.5% Defense So the questions are: 1. Does the slightly increased buff/debuff values on the Defender balance out with the lower damage compared with the Corruptor? (Or does it come out behind or even ahead after all the math?) 2. Even WITH defender getting its full Vigilance buff, Mids shows that the Corruptor Scourge effect adds significantly more overall DPS. Does the increased buff/debuff values on the defender manage to keep it around the same damage output as a corruptor in this situation (is scourge even that good??) 3. Do either ATs get any unspoken additional benefits that would apply with the Dual Pistol powerset? Mids doesnt show the value differences for the swap ammo effects. Ive also read something about Defenders getting some better ability to proc damage from IO's? (not sure if this is true) Lastly. This is not a character I will be twinking. I simply dont have enough inf or resources to do so. Its also not something that will most likely be getting rushed to 50, but rather, Ill be playing on normal mission farming teams where Id have to pull my own weight. So im not super concerned with how amazing one might be at 50 with full IO sets and such. How much of a pain, slog, hinderance its going to be to play it leveling up is a big concern as well.

The big question: How did you all get it?

I think "upscaling" might be the wrong term being used. yes, there are ways to take a smaller resolution image and "upscale" it to a much higher resolution image, like the above one. From what has been discussed, the game doesnt support this because its got a limit to the sizes for existing textures. There is, however, a way people are using AI to take a low res image, and having the AI "reprocess" the texture to look better, at the same resolution. No, its not the same thing as upscaling, but it could possibly enhance some of the really low quality ones that were just poorly done

Every new player who does small groups, actual missions and story, who doesnt have an alt level 50 farming character, will 100% make good use of that inf they would get while leveling from 1-50. The only players who dont find it valuable are those who have been playing long enough, or who have expert knowledge of the game systems that a new player wouldnt. Its easy for experienced players to forget what starting new is like. (something CoH suffers a great deal from with many players) And again, if its really that trivial, that unimportant, then it shouldnt be an issue to simply allow players to earn it with the double xp. Why be upset or bothered that people are getting something that "has about zero effect"

So basically, xp boosts should only be for vets who have earned enough inf over the course of their play time? Thats one way to look at it for sure...

Spoken like someone who has become completely out of touch what a brand new player would experience in the game. Im sure leaving it as is, or changing it, wouldnt affect you or your play experience one bit.

It would seem that its come time to really ask, "Does this negative need to exist?" Many will state that the amount of inf you miss out on is negligible. Nothing something to even care about. If that is the case, why is the negative even there still? Best case scenario, people dont care because they already have more than enough inf from playing the game so long. Worst case, however, a new player on their first character is going to find the game unreasonably harder by leaving them mostly broke. Asking a new player not to use the double xp when 1. Nearly every player is encouraging them to, and 2. This games xp grind to max level is ultimately more than most new mmorpg players are used to (if they havent played old school mmorpg before). Just in the last week alone, Ive seen at least 3 new players come and go from the game because CoH inherently isnt very hand holding or easy to grasp for many. I know the vets easily overlook this, the game being as familiar as the back of their hand now. So again, perhaps its time to simply remove the negative part of the double xp buff? Just make it a double xp buff, with no downside. Or perhaps, just make it the default rate of xp. There is already an option in the setting to disable xp for those who dont want to outlevel content. (as well as Ouro for when you do) Just something to think about.

To start out. Im poor. Super poor. I dont expect to have much inf by the time I play to 50 as the double xp buff removes any earnings along the way. Im curious what the best solo primary/secondary sets could be for a Sent that was ONLY using SO's along the way. Im not looking to do +4/+8 missions, but I also dont want to be stuck soloing +1/+0 missions either. I know that with proper slotting of sets, and end game unlocks, any build can be viable. Its just getting there that is the big struggle, and id prefer a power combo that struggles the least until that point.