WumpusRat

I always make sure my enhancements are aesthetically appealing to me. Like if I have 3 of one set and 3 of another, I make sure that the two sets are AAABBB. If it's 3-1 it'll be AAAB. Etc. Procs always go in the rightmost slots of a power. Same for mastermind auras. If any of the enhancements are attuned, they ALL have to be attuned, so they match.

He's talking about soloing, not running at x/8. The larger tanker aoes are irrelevant if you're not fighting enough mobs to make the bigger aoe matter. Also, I think you underestimate how fast fury builds. Even running at 0/1 it's incredibly easy for a brute to maintain 85% fury for nearly the entire mission, unless you're literally moving at a walk and stopping to go afk every couple minutes.

Vhaz, Arachnos, Longbow, Carnies, Malta, and Banished Pantheon are ones I can think of off the top of my head. I think some Nemesis might be able to as well, though I don't fight them enough to know for sure. And as SwitchFade said, Willpower has zero defense debuff resist, meaning the moment an enemy tags you with a debuff your defense crumbles. And while smash/lethal being capped is good against groups that only deal that kind of damage, Willpower doesn't really have much else in the way of resists other than psi. Fire and energy are two other extremely common damage types, and Willpower doesn't offer much resistance to them at all. My heavily tricked out Willpower brute gets absolutely MELTED by Banished Pantheon out in DA, because her non-physical resists are only around 50-60%.

All depends on what you like, really, and what difficulty you're looking to solo on. Tankers are probably the easiest AT to solo with, as it's fairly simple to build them up even with just SOs where you can plow through missions without much issue. Brutes are similar, though their defenses are a bit lower, but their damage is substantially higher due to fury. If you go nuts with procs tankers can be very close behind though. Masterminds are (at least to me) incredibly fun, since you've got a whole squad of friends with you at all times, and you can manage all sorts of interesting content with them. Their biggest weakness (at least early on) is aoe damage, which can crush you pretty hard, but they're very good at dealing with EBs in story arcs, making it a comfortable solo experience. Scrappers and Stalkers are fairly similar, with lower defenses than brutes and tankers, but very solid damage output. They can become quite tanky, but not to the point (generally) of just ignoring mobs. Sentinels are basically ranged scrappers, though they give up crit for the ranged damage. They can be quite durable, and most of their defensive sets are slightly different from other AT's, giving them a unique play experience even for a set you've used before. Blasters, controllers, dominators, defenders, and corruptors can all play solo, though they're more difficult (generally) than the above, either by virtue of being much squishier, lower damage, lack of CC protection, or a combination of several factors. They can sill work just fine if you don't put the difficulty too high too soon though.

Yeah, I believe bosses have something like a 9.25% or so chance to hit you regardless of how much defense you have. I remember testing it with my SR tanker one night (she's got around 60% defense to all positionals), and while the rank and file +4 minions only had a 5% to hit, the bosses had a bit over 9%.

For defense-focused builds, I almost always aim to get as close as I can to the incarnate softcap, since I like running the incarnate content. It's more challenging than endlessly farming Council in PI.

I've joked about this one a few times on that TF. "Hard Mode Katie Hannon, featuring the brand new badge: 50 Times the Victor!"

If you do Provost Marchand's "A New War" arc, the first couple missions throw 10 named villains at you. Makes it super easy to get Villain Disruptor.

How I play and lead TFs is pretty much the same. I want to get things done in a timely fashion, but I'm not out to break any speed records. And I'm completely fine with just caving in the faces of every mob on the path towards the objective. Sometimes it's a lot of fun to just leave a swathe of destruction behind you. And sometimes speeding things up can be nice, especially with sloggy TFs like Synapse or Citadel. If a TF is taking longer than normal (and "normal" is somewhat relative, but having been on both slow and short versions of all the TFs, I have a mental note as to what "normal" for me is for each one) but the group is chatty and we're having fun, I have no problem just tooling around and killing stuff while chatting. If nobody is talking and it's taking a long time, it does start to get a bit grindy. But that's pretty rare, at least on Everlasting. RPers tend to be a pretty talkative bunch in general. Some missions I DO tend to pipe up about things that might make it smoother/easier, such as the Moonfire TF having someone with ATT park at the entrance and just yoink everyone back to the start to avoid having to escort Dr. Roberta "Deathwish" Todd. For the most part though, when I join a TF it's because I either want the credit for it, the merits, some faster exp than soloing, or just to hang around with a group for a while. I tend to just go along with however the group is playing.

I'd like to see the Thugs, Demons and Beast Mastery mastermind sets get an update like the other four sets got. Since it was mentioned by a dev after that went live that it was being worked on and would probably be coming "soon". But then again, "soon" in development terms usually means anywhere from 6 months to 5 years.

That's one of the things I remember most about old-school CoH. Yellow and Green tram lines. "Okay, so you want to come join us in Peregrine and you're in Atlas. So you'll need to hop the yellow rail to Steel Canyon, then run north through the zone and hop the green rail to Talos, then run over to the docks area and hop through the ferry to get to the island..." <and 10m later when they were halfway there> "Oh dang, the person he was sidekicked to just had to bail. We're going to need to recruit another person to sidekick them..."

A lot of my slotting will depend on the powersets, end management, and concept. I'll generally try and maximize everything I can while keeping set bonuses to reach certain checkpoints of resist, defense, end management, etc. I don't use procs very often, and almost never use purple sets unless I'm absolutely desperate for more +recharge (like trying to make Phantom Army permanent). I'm a huge fan of set bonuses, so I don't frankenslot things too much unless I absolutely have to, or giving up a couple of set bonuses will get me something that I really want, or it's a power that I don't worry about set bonuses in (like Fortitude just being slotted with 4 defense/recharges so they're both at ED cap). I also use pretty much exclusively attuned enhancements, so that I can exemplar around as much as I want without worrying about things not working anymore. Health I generally slot with Panacea health/end, Numina regen/recovery, and Miracle recovery. If one of my powersets has its own end recovery or restoration tool I might drop Numina or Miracle, if I can use that slot somewhere else for another set bonus. Stamina is almost universally slotted with Power Transfer heal and 3 parts Synapse (end mod, end mod/runspeed, and end mod/recharge), to get almost ED-capped recovery, +22% run speed, and 10% slow/recharge resist. Combined with Winter's Gift's unique somewhere in the build and it's 30% resist to those, which is definitely noticeable (at least until a bunch of Tsoo go "nya ha ha, take 15 siphon speeds!"). I always try and get the ATOs into the build (and superior at 50), though they can be split up depending on what I need. Particularly the Mastermind set that gives +10% recharge for two parts, so I often split that up amongst all three pets for 30% global recharge. And the four-part bonus of the other set for another 10%, so 40% global recharge from just my ATOs. Though if my secondary isn't super recharge intensive I'll put the full set into a pet, as the higher set bonuses are pretty nice. A lot of my build/slotting choices will also be determined by the concept for the character. I'll take powers that fit the concept, ignore others that don't (even if they would be a superior choice from a min/max perspective), and generally try and build them to fit the concept. For my "D&D Characters in Paragon" builds, I'll try and have them conform as closely as I can to the class. For instance, the Paladin uses radiation armor with Ground Zero slotted heavily for healing instead of damage to replicate the "Healing Burst"/"Lay on Hands" ability that Paladins get. Of course if the Medicine pool had an alternate animation for Aid Other that was just a power activation instead of the tricorder, I'd have used that.

Beast Mastery isn't a bad set, overall. None of the Mastermind sets are "bad". BM is just the bottom of the pile in terms of effectiveness and mechanics for the pets. It's like being offered a bunch of food you like, and going "Well, this is my least favorite out of all the things I really like, but I still really like it." The biggest drawback is that Fortify Pack punishes you for using it. The pets gain damage and crit percentage based on how many stacks of Pack Mentality they have, and if you ever pop FP, it burns all those stacks and converts it into defense. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad, other than the fact that while FP is running, they can neither gain nor benefit from Pack Mentality. So they lose about 20% damage and crit chance, which is a HUGE blow to their damage output. Stat-wise, the animals are very solid. Decent resists, and defense on top of it. There's an issue with their attack chains though, in that there's a "dead zone" at the end of each attack animation which causes them to pause and do nothing for a second or two between attacks. Some of their cooldowns need looking at, as well. Lick Wounds has a 60s cooldown, and is a relatively small heal (around 100 hp), so it definitely shouldn't be on such a long cooldown for such a weak ability. Same with the Lioness +def roar, which lasts for something like 10-15 seconds, and has a 120s cooldown. I'm curious to see what the devs do with the overhaul of BM (as well as Thugs and Demons) when they eventually get around to it, the same way they did the other sets back in October of last year.

My favorite moment from back on live was getting to level 6 on my first character and picking up hover, and lifting off into the air to float around in the sky. Flight was and still is my favorite travel power. Just being able to fly is awesome. And from HC, logging in for the first time and seeing Atlas Park again.

A lot of it also depends on the EB/AV. Some of them, like Mary MacComber (god I hate her) have a passive power called "Positioning", which makes them actively try and avoid melee combat, but it's hyper-tuned so they'll just go sailing off at escape velocity and keep running for ages.

Pretty sure /ah predates HC. It was a veteran reward if I remember correctly, which existed on live. But yeah, I remember the days of being happy at finding a luck charm, since they'd sell for 50k or so. I'd hunt magical enemies specifically just to get more drops of them, to finance my early levels.

As far as the Family goes, I don't really see a pressing need to have them be an "end-game faction". They're not out to conquer the world, they're not threats on the scale that Arachnos, Council, or other things are. They're a bunch of crime families who manage drug trade, steal cars, run gambling dens, and the like. Redside definitely fleshes them out a lot more, but they're fine being a low to mid-range group. Once you're up to the point of saving the world regularly, fighting planar entities, and the like, a bunch of goombahs with machine guns who are trying to steal a couple cars seems like something that just doesn't measure up to the same level of threat. If they wanted to make some more Family-specific story arcs I'd be fine with that though. I just don't think they need to be running around being threats on par with Malta, Arachnos, Ruularu, etc.

I have a couple of characters with PFF, and what I generally use it for is one of two things: 1) A panic-button for when I need to get the heck out of a situation. 2) An alpha-strike soaker. Turn on PFF, jump into a pack of mobs, let them dump all their big attacks, controls, and other things, then drop PFF and fire off my own. <edit> Wow, necro thread. Neat.

I know (or at least I think I know) there's a way to use teleport and the "teleport to target" bind to pop yourself to a teammate if they're within range, even if you can't see them. I was scouting ahead the other night on a TF and someone blipped in next to me while I was running through a big crowd of mobs, and he instantly face-planted when they all pivoted to stare at him.

Every now and then I'll go to PI and do the "PI team forming, +4/8 carnies only" or "malta only" and see who's brave enough to come join me. I get a number for carnies, but usually it's crickets if I mention malta. Running +4/8 in DA can be fun, especially if you don't just stick to Tsoo and Knives. BP in DA are no joke if you don't have massive amounts of defense or capped resists to about 6 different things, because they throw everything and the kitchen sink at you. And then there are the Talons, who laugh at your puny 60% defense and just slap you around with auto-hit aoe stuff.

Normally when I build my tankers and brutes I'm after set bonuses, not looking to slot as many procs as possible and be forced to take hasten, lotg mule powers and everything else I can cram into the build to try and get as much global recharge as possible. Hence why my brutes tend to vastly out-damage my tankers. For normal mission running, would a brute with normal slotting whose attacks are on 3-5 second cooldowns clear faster or slower than a tanker who relies on randomized procs? Or are proc-tankers basically trying to run around and herd up a bunch of stuff so that when they DO attack their procs have a higher chance of going off? I'd think that would slow down killing rather than speed it up, vs a brute who can just jump into any given group, wipe it out, and be running to the next group while the tanker is still herding up mobs. Maybe I just don't get the whole "proc meta" thing, though.

The stuff I normally track is: Current HP Regen Rate (on characters who focus regen) Recovery Rate Endurance Spend Lethal Resist Other Resist (other being whichever one my build tends to focus on) Melee Defense Ranged Defense Exp to next level (if below 49) Inf Last To-Hit Check (if I'm not tracking regen, means I can keep an eye on how much defense or to-hit debuffs I've been slapped with easily)

Hey now, the proc for Sentinel's Ward isn't bad. The other one we don't talk about because it's poop.

I keep myself interested by creating new concepts or batch-concepts of characters. My current project (a bunch of D&D adventurers who wound up in Paragon) has taken me months, and I'm nearly done with all the classes. It's been fun coming up with builds that fit each class, and I gave myself the limitation that I wouldn't repeat any power sets. So once one had shield defense, nobody else would use it, etc. Of course, I've had so much fun with it I might start making "multi-classed" characters, and allow myself to have a bit of overlap of powersets as long as it's one that the "pure" class uses. (The fighter is an axe/shield tanker, for instance, while a fighter/rogue might be broadsword/shield or axe/ninjitsu) My next project will probably be one that I started ages ago, but never really finished. A bunch of elementals summoned by the Circle of Thorns and then who went rogue, and are now on their own exploring the world. The usual air, earth, fire, and water, but also the "para-elementals" of lightning, ice, magma, and mire. And I still have a bunch of other group concepts lying around, like my Rikti-hunting aliens, an ex-original member of the Circle of Thorns who broke off and formed her own cabal with a bunch of apprentices, etc. So I've got tons of stuff to keep me occupied. 🙂

Whether or not I take a travel power is based on the concept I have for the character. And a tiny bit from wanting to squeeze in some set bonuses/lotg slots. The vast majority of my characters have flight as their travel power. Sure, I could just buy a flying carpet or flying disc or jetpack, but the flight power with a couple slots in it gives me set bonuses, 20% slow/rech resist, kb resist, and/or about twice the speed. I'm not a fan of superspeed, and I rarely take hasten on any characters, so none of the powers in that pool really appeal to me much. Superleap feels a bit clunky, and I'm not fond of having to constantly be holding the jump button down to travel. Teleport is fast for long distances, but then you have to slow down and carefully aim in order to get to the final destination, and going around buildings can be annoying. On the plus side, you can get teleport + a prestige flight power (which I've done on a couple characters) and it's pretty convenient. A few of my characters have flying carpets, since it fit their concept. A couple of them have the flying disc thing (either created by force energy, ki, etc). Several of my characters just get around with athletic run + sprint + combat jumping. I do miss some of the more interesting travel powers from CO. Like "earth flight" where you rip a chunk of the ground up and fly around on it. Or tunneling.