Snarky

Great responses. Thank you all. Now i need to let this stew a bit. A lot to think about. Searching for the playable paired with the truly strange. I love me some oddities

Thanks for making me look up PEBKAC lol. Yeah i agree. Maybe if you are really running a horrid tank then you are going to have an issue ( like you built so poor you only have enough end to taunt ). But any Tank (even before the generous changes ) does well in melee. I just soloed redside every contact on an invul (no damage aura ) Dark ( crap AoE at best ) and melee was fine. Maybe boring but doing okay. Its definitely a user issue. I was running my Dark Dark Brute last night. Not particularly tanky. No taunt In two separate TF at the end there was a rush of ambush adds. I veered from the AV lightning fast and landed on them. That let the team concentrate on the AV at the cost of one Brutes assistance on DPS. You just have to always be looking out for how to help the team complete the current task faster. That could be getting 3 struggling teammates in a hall split from the party back to the group or that could be juggling two AVs

So i leveled a Dark Dark to 50 a few months back. Never even fought Trapdoor. Just stripped it and parked it Because i knew I wasnt ready for it and that irritated me I did not remember enough about builds. I had no infamy to even start the build and i had no idea what to throw on it so i ran a lot of other stuff (mostly SS Invul and a Invul Dark Tank) but alted for months today that changed. I had a crapton of enhancers in my base. I had a Billion inf. I searched through the forums and found a build by one of the people i respect. And tore it apart lol. It had the wrong attack set (dark dark builds are hard to find on the forums) but i now knew what i wanted. The theory and the rules. I swapped out sets based on fundamental principles like do not chase Def on a Res set. My Res went up (two purple sets added). My defense down. Especially energy defense from low 40 to 30s. And Energy Res went up to ...50. Hmmm. But i trusted what i had been reading. Was able to keep s/l at 45.5 def. But i really was not just chasing more resistance. I squeezed on those two purple sets, another LOTG and added Haste. 70% recharge before i touch Haste or look at Incarnates my End was horrid. But i would throw some Emps at it and got a tier 3 Cardiac Core Alpha. Prob solved then i bought the enhancers respec’d and went through the incarnate arc. Yep. End was baaaaad after i incarnated i got that cardiac lol then i ran PI for a full level, A Khan, and a Market Crash. this character does not run at all like a refular Brute. It runs like a ghetto melee Dom with armor and HP. I use the little PBAoEs as damage firing them off whenever they are up (they are up very quickly). The Def>Res>Heal leaves out the top level. Mez>Def>Res>Heal. This thing stuns and fears like a champ. Then chews through anything but bosses fast fast. The damage buff is nearly always up anyways glad i finally got to build this out. I meant to post this Saturday night. Sunday i ran Synapse. I was careful in respec as the build leveled it would be playable. It was good. No end issues which was shocking. And i needed a Citadel a Manti and a Numina. Ran well through those. An ITF. This thing is a beast. I farmed two maps s/l the first choice in AE. At +2/x8 went well. i ran a Keyes. Okay. I died there. But the AV caught me in a bunker lol. And i died again. But even tanks die in iTrials. Bottom line. Very happy to have this build in my crew. This will be a go to for some time. Just vicious and unkillable in normal content

Okay. You just reminded me of an alt a ran for a while back on live. Laughy. Yea the name was available. Full clown outfit. The colors ooof. I was looking at art theory and took a long time making every piece be opposed to what it was next to while shifting through all the colors as i moved from piece to piece that was a SS Will. I think we need a mace invul clown. Who is laughing now?

NICE thanks. I do love well written documentation.

Heh. I love a damage aura. But i love just ignoring EVERTHING that is not Nova Fist even more

I am currently running a Tanker for most of my gaming. This was planned and only partly to do with buff. I started the character in late November and had heard rumors About the changes. I had also heard rumors they would not happen. Rumors lol i started the tank and solo arc ran it through Redside. Grabbing blue and red TF and SF. (Rogue). Then the changes happened and u 50’d it and is pretty much my main this has more to do with i wanted an easy badger (this is my badger) than the tank changes i have traditionally played Brutes most of the time and still have a fully kitted out SS/Invul Brute that i pull out once or twice a week so personally i am running tanks more which probably means i will start blasting or bruting soon lol

As stated i have never ran a ‘troller. I ran a grav energy Perma dom back on Live for a month or two before stripping it of the ton of enhancers it took to create What sets work Better in Controllers. I have heard Grav does. Was considering a Grav/Dark. I run a lot of robots and undead. I tried Dark/Dark in a dom recently. I dont like the Dog hellhound personally. The crazy grav ball of death i am okay with thanks

Just for it. Think about how you will feel about this later. Do it

I tried war mace. I am very costume oriented and did not quite live anything that goes with the weapons. i tried TW and was able to drop in a abandoned but liked costume and match it to one of the weapons there i will have to get used to momentum. Of course it really is slow at low levels. But it supposedly rocks at high levels which is the goal

On topic. For a melee character could i get a few opinions of the top three damage dealing powerset

Let say you bave a group of like minded folks. Lets call them villains. But some already want to be rogues. Sigh then you got the tow the line villains ( or pretend to toe the line ) Arachnos then you got cult followers of a specific dream. CoT then you got other folks trying to save the world ... er Vahzilok. Hey full disclosure here that is their party line. Ot even sure how they got there. Drinking their own embalming fluid? then you got the very motivated yet completely off the rails Freakshow i am not even going to try ti fit Carnival in beee point is everyone wants something different. Whether they are fully bought into their gangs way of doing something or are just surfing a movement is individual. But they are all rolling hard to what they think is right

Thanks. I been thinking about War Mace. I normally dont like weapons. But there is just something satisfying about hitting something with a stick. Could be be optimal and primal lol

I e is a weird set. Most controller set of damage sets. So they made it odd to balance. Not sure of exact numbers. It would not surprise me at all

Dupe

I got inspired by the min/max thread for a concept toon. Normally i build to theme and end up with an undead or a robot. In fact this will probably be skinned that way But the premise is this: Build not for concept, but for the absolute optimal choices in the game I am leaning toward Invul Armor rite as the base. I know i could get more damage with a set with an Aura but believe that in this situation Invul is the right choice the real question is Primary. I normally roll Super Strength or Dark Melee. But i believe they may not be the optimal choices. I have been looking at Scrapper thread for ideas The concept is for late game content. So incarnate abilities are part of the calculus. Any suggestions about attack set, incarnate powers, and even logical reasons for moving from invulnerability are appreciated also suggestions for pool powers and epics are wide open. I am in the safe CJ Haste and usually Maneuvers rut there. Good chance that will go into this. But again open for suggestions This is not a “farmer” bit a TF and Trial toon, optimized for surviving handily while dishing out tons if damage in a wide variety of situations Thanks in advance for ideas

So it appears that all the damage Interface are DoT and none are front loaded. Is that right?

Yeah i see a tank more like the Dwarf King cousin in Battle of 5 armies Hobbit movie. Just chatting. Occasionally smacking the crap out of something but mostly keeping an eye on the flow and being irritating

I am actually considering more conversions not less. The 3-5 million market is getting soft. May e i will take a hundred enhancer of each method and see the results documented with converters used as a project to see though. If nothing else it will keep me interested ( hardest part) in crafting selling fir another week

I am a costume creator aficionado. Every thing i make finally looks undead or robotic but man do i drag my butt through the choices first. Remember MiB choosing pie? Yeah Everything is there. Everything

I am kind of salivating iver more incarnate powers (and cake!). but honestly i am so grateful to the Homecoming team for being the team that is really making an attempt to do it quality and correctly i am all in here. My backup game is WoW. I still am subbed but have not logged in for months. I only went there after CoH shut down. The community there us just about toxic as can be imagined. I solo and think about CoH whenni am there lol. i stay subbed so i have a place to run in case NCsoft goes crazy (again) I am just glad to have my villains heroes and community back. Thank you Homecoming Team!!!

I just eyeball groups. My tab targeting skills are poor. My comp seems to reset the damn things everytime anyways. And i can tell at a glance the mob group makeup and who i bate most in it. Sometimes i ru. Over a poor cim engineer instead if a surgeon but i can luve with that

I’ve rolled with Junk Bot a few times. Always stands out as being solid on the team AND being astoundingly well developed in style thanks for being around

Being a good team center is more just “doing it”. Whatever build or even AT you do it with. Tanks just have the best tools for it it comes from knowing the game and playing in a manner that is helpful to teammates. See a group of teammates fighting ten baddies as you race to another part of the mission where the “leader” is? ....stop. Taunt. Attack. Help them clear that. Then move as a group to the leader. It is a very team conscious style of play. For a melee that does not necessarily come natural also it goes back to experience. Knowing the mobs. Memorized the building layouts. Knowing the Task Forces. Although there are some late game task forces i do not know well. Those i just fall back to staying with the leaders and coming in like a wet cat at whatever they pause to fight. But if teammates are struggling to keep up? I hang back and help. The leader probably has a blinged out 50 who is doing fine. The poor lost souls in the back? They are gonna be real grateful a Tank happened by to help

No. It is a specific term that goes back to tabletop gaming culture and lore and mechanics. As discussed earlier in the thread. an old school D&D character had 6 stats. If you had a GM that let you use the system of stat placement your character looked and acted like a caveman (min stats) but had the intellect to fire iff massive magic at bonuses ( high int)