Snarky

Build anything anyway you want. That is the joy of CoH However, if you look closely, you will notice no one took issues in the basic facts of my “boilerplate wall of rules” on Dark. They may offer other ways. But what I said was all true. Soooo. You can build to emphasize all the positives in the armor set. Orrrr. You can chose to go a different route. Not necessarily worse, but just starting to drop “the most optimal” for “i wanted this instead”. The play differences will be nominal until you really Fustercluck the choices and enhancements But if you want to Tank Lord Recluse on a Master Run Ms Lib with a Dark Armor Brute…. I would not stray far from the basic facts I laid out. Good luck

I have for years worked to devise ranged toons as fully long range. I have a Beam Rifle Temporal Blaster that was my DPS go to for Really Hard Way Magisterium. Here is what all of my testing concluded.... Ranged Defense is anything not melee. About 8 feet. Most of the time being 150 away is both impractical and sacrifices opportunities of positioning and a bunch of stuff. Like not being where the team is, getting buffs, getting left behind... A set with a Ranged Nuke played at about 40-80 all the time is the money zone. Cones, buffs, positioning etc.

The kid character (old man…) steals the show. The rest of the writing is predictable and formulaic. Yes, even the “extreme drama” characters. Seen it a hundred times

A lot of good points about accuracy. If you see my builds I almost always take a +to hit power, add a kismet, and have sets with +accuracy. Therefore Cloak of Fear can be 3 slotted for a different set bonus….or two slotted etc

Got the last post in General before thread was moved to "storage"...

The Tick. Patrick Warburton. Hands down best. Makes me want to roll up a Invulnerability Super Strength Tank right now. Oh wait, The Tick does not ever get mad. Guess I will not do that.

You did not take cloak of Fear or Oppressive Gloom. Then you built for Defense bonuses. Play and build any way you want, but this is like driving south on a northbound freeway lane. You have to understand HOW Dark works. Dark takes the standard CoH Def>Res>Heal and puts that right in the trash compactor. Then dares you to say shit about it. Dark uses AoE stun and AoE fear to mezze the nobodies. This gets rid of a ton of annoying incoming attacks. If you do not take both those toggles do yourself a favor and quit reading. Dark Dark uses to hit debuffs to also reduce incoming attacks. Dark has non suppressed stealth. When they cant see you eating their friend twenty feet away you can call that defense. So Defense strategy is this. Do not waste resources building defense. you have no DDR and shit is worthless in a tough fight, it goes the F away Now, your big bads ignore most of that. Soooo… some of the best resists in the game. Do not neglect energy resistance. It can be built into a nice neighborhood. I have Tanked Rom on a Master Run because i have energy resistance BEST heal in the game. Available every few seconds. Top of my head i think mine sits at 8 sec recharge. From .0001 health to 100%. Dark Melee provides very good ST damage. Bolstered by Dark armor damage aura there is decent AoE as well. since a Dark Dark Brute is rarely killed you will win any and all DPS races. the most spectacular tacoing of my Dark Brute i recall was a shadow shard TF. A teammate got stuck in a crossroads in a cave map with tons of big spawns all around. My overconfident butt went in. Those F-ing eyeballs ignore steath. So part of my “defense” was gone. Then…..oof. Rikti, some Nemi and a very few Longbow Wardens do the same. You need to learn the groups and know the odds. Only bet on winning hands. that is the cliff notes. If you dig around the Tank and Brute Forums you will find my builds for each AT. They differ from how most people build the armor. A lot of people do not take all the toggles. Yeah, I do not think highly of that. A lot of people go “oh, I cannot have good energy resistance” Yeah, I do not think highly of that. Finally, Resistance is odd. It is very simple, and that places it as the odd duck in CoH game mechanics. I cannot stress this enough. Resistance is it’s own Resistance debuff Resistance. Weird sentence. What it means. If you have 100% resistance you can ALMOST never be debuffed. There are a very few (and i mean just a couple) beings in CoH that ignore res debuff res. One is an odd all Longbow Warden which you will encounter almost freaking never. But that shithead is out there. I am sure there are one or two others who do the same. They are much rarer than a sapper for instance. But just to be clear, that power exists in game. So… when I build a Res toon I build for 100% values rather than 90%. Then my Res cannot be yoinked out from under me. In say a Dr Aeon. Those brickers tear through resistance like its tin foil on a candy bar.

I was really expecting some beach photos here

I used to love making a new villain, busting out of the Zig, and hitting Fort Darwin. On Freedumb back in the day there was a steady trickle of villains and we could rob the bank in Mercy for a few levels. It is a different game now. Share some stories!

Both ways. Uphill. In the snow. Real snowmen attacking you.

We are lucky it does not trigger ambush train….

watching yet another PUG Posi 1 team blissfully wander up to the City Hall doors and unknowingly trigger the ambush. And me chomping inspirations and somehow surviving the madness....again. "Why are you fond of that?" you may ask. EMBRACE THE MADNESS I say!

Given one AV Malta Sapper powers AND the unmitigable resistance debuff power and you will have a league nightmare on your hands that will tax the rez capabilities of the best!

I long ago realized that Paragon, the Rogue Isles, and points East are caught in a "time bottle" I even run a few characters based on the premise. Almost NONE of the people in CoH realize this. The "Time Bottle" effect is best seen from the vantage of one of my robot toons investigating it. Using OURO they diligently run every bit of content. As they progress in levels they stop exp. They do everything they can in that level range. No one notices (whether in "real" or "ouro" time) that everyone in Paragon is caught in this temporal "bottle" Stuck doing the same things endlessly as if it is the first time. Unsure if the Menders realize. They pretend they do not notice at least. Outside the bottle everything is normal. Time marches on, computers advance, cars are updated. In Paragon it is always the same few days of X year, cycling forever more.

trollin' da newbs...

Would you believe the original Devs created it so there would be a "extended play session" broken up over 2-5 sessions for a group of friends...?

Here is my ranged defense Ice Cold Corr Corruptor - Ice Blast - Cold Domination ranged def 2.0.mxd

BAMPF

Back on live, in the mists of time, before incarnates... I ran a Dark Melee/Invulnerability Brute based on concepts of a smart community board writer. This was a very high recharge build that used T9 Unstoppable. And it worked. To mitigate the crash there are inspirations and/or Dull Pain and Dark Consumption. It works, and it works well. I remember a Barracuda Strike Force vividly. Two team wipes on the Reichsman fight at the end. Except my Brute. Who held the room and kept fighting, Reichsman and all. Cycling through Unstoppable when it was up, building inspirations during that 3 minutes, then weathering the crash and fighting for a couple minutes without Unstoppable. Then back into Unstoppable. It was a significant chunk of time for them all to come back from the hospital. Twice.

i never tried (knew about...) this

After years of research ( thanks for allowing the necessary time ) i can say when to use personal force field: when you realize ( before death ) the enemies dps will overtake your dps and they will kill you before you kill them. 1) activate PFF 2) reposition or get inspiration from email, do something to change the situation.

Last year some of my SG mates were using teleport to get through cave maps (teleporting to where other teammates were located, as long as that was within TP range, walls or not) Is that still possible or patched?

consistently difficult. there is a location badge in a tunnel on the ass end of Grandville. without stealth this tends to be difficult. there is a army of arachnos and arguably difficult terrain. many are naming places where you can walk up to three giant monsters. but you do not have to. every badger needs this badge and there can be a price paid.

so can sentinels

Now that we have been talking about it the Devs have decided to “revisit” Brutes. Now, as you know, they will buff Tanks again. But they have something special planned for those pesky Brutes…