Gulbasaur

It's similar to the defender vs corruptor debate - outside of some niche examples*, the answer is "whichever you enjoy the most". I like my brute. I like my tanker. I loved my stalker. Regen brutes tanking Hamidon would be another as they recover from the untyped damage pretty much instantly, although everyone spams incarnates anyway so it's less crucial. * Solo, they're roughly equivalent on raw DPS. Some defenders can buff much harder than is needed by the average team, especially when they buff something with a fairly low effective cap like defence, so you might as well bring a corruptor in a team setting as the defender inherent primarily helps them solo. Some support sets are substantially stronger on a defender, particularly strong debuff sets or outliers like storm summoning which uses pseudopets that don't proc scourge so work out fractionally higher DPS on a defender.

Brutes occupy a difficult spot between tankers and scrappers. Scrappers have passively gained more survivability due to how easy it is to build up defence and resists with IO set bonuses, and tankers were buffed so that they have now got better AoE powers, as well as a general damage buff. Solo, a scrapper will out-damage a brute almost every time. Solo, a tanker will out-survive a brute. There's nothing wrong with them, they just don't shine outside of a few niche instances.

@Acidon- thank you! What a kind thing to say.

I don't disagree, but the (usually) stronger buffs and debuffs on a defender can make them more resilient and -res debuffs can tilt the amount of damage in a defender's favour. The pseudo-pet thing and the fact that the numbers are a bit inconsistent make it more complex. It's certainly true that there isn't that much in it, though. Good breakdown!

and twirling, always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom

I'm all about concept, so I'll probably go elec/elec/elec. Dark is very... safe. You debuff -ToHit hard as well as -DMG so it's a very tanky-feeling set. It also has a very big heal.

Idle musings: Dark teams and solos well, without having to change what you do really. Kinetics teams well but is kind of mediocre solo. It can be done, but it shines in teams. Storm is wonderful and amazing and brilliant and fun and I can completely understand why some people don't like it. Traps is fun but you'll spend a lot of time standing and waiting for things to recharge. Rad and Time are fun but not my thing. Sonic is fine if you like hands-off gameplay. Likewise Force Fields. Elec looks good. Trying that next!

You're missing "pew" and "the one that's also a heal" and "the snipe with the yellow circle around it". There's also "that annoying power you need an anchor for". I think it pairs well the the sorcery power pool - Rune of Protection is a mezz-breaker and Enflame is fun because you're immobilising things anyway so you might as well set the one in the middle on fire. This thread got me playing my dark/dark/dark corruptor again and it's good fun. The Soul Noir effects are really nice.

From playing my storm/water defender... yes. Yes. Do this. Find an attach set that can take lots of +Recharge procs. Take Hasten, even if you don't normally take Hasten. Take anything that gives you more endurance or endurance recovers - you need it. Storm has a lot of (fairly) high damage powers for a support set, and once you start double- or triple-stacking lightning storms, you can own the battlefield.

Super chill, super safe gameplay. Damage is never big, but it's so safe it doesn't need to be. You get a tiny man made of floof who heals you and stuff. You can give him a damage proc for a very, very tiny DPS raise. Dark Mastery gives you an aura and a damage boost. You have a lot of cones which mostly synergise pretty well. Splat down your big dark circle of debuff, immobilise enemies in it and mash buttons. Run in with Personal Fulcrum Shift and let off your nuke. Good combo. Yes, I have forgotten the name of every single power.

More "did you know?" that anything else, but if you put the Gaussian's proc in Assault Tactics from the Leadership power pool, it has a chance to trigger for every ally in its radius (but you still get the effect) - meaning on a team of 8 players with some pets out, you can get something like 25% Build Up uptime. Basically, your Build Up uptime scales by the number of friendlies on your team. Putting it in Aim is a completely sensible thing to do, but if you're someone like me who forgets to use Aim or Build Up, it's a good passive boost in Assault Tactics.

Are you solo? That's a big part of it, in my opinion. Solo, I'd often rate a defender above a corruptor due to their stronger buffs and debuffs and their Inherent power giving them a bit of a damage boost solo. There's much less in it damage-wise than people acknowledge and a strong debuff set like Poison or Rad on a defender pushes them ahead. Some sets, like Storm, just are better DPS on a defender (solo) due to interactions with inherent powers and numbers that are balanced atypically. That said, there isn't a huge amount in it. There's also the fact that defenders and corruptors can be force multipliers - many buffs affect the whole team, and debuffs benefit the whole team. If you're on a team of 8 and maintaining a resistance or regen debuff, you're probably outpacing the extra damage you would be doing if you were a blaster in that scenario in terms of extra damage taken or damage not healed. Personally, I've never got on with blasters. They do a bit more damage, but never quite enough to justify the lack of additional tricks up your sleeve (apart from a couple of mezzes here and there and some very gentle debuffs). Corruptors and defenders have a more rounded toolkit and several powersets can close the damage gap and sentinels aren't that behind blasters in terms of damage considering how much easier they are to keep upright.

It seems good. I know nothing of the Sentinel ways. Please bestow upon me the sacred knowledge. What does Shocked mean? It appears apparently at random. I know it does something but the wiki provides few clues. I'm sure if I scoured the patch notes, I'd find it, but I was asking other things so I thought I'd ask it here. Is the Voltaic Sentinel good? I'm sort of comparing it to Dark Servant, which is a good power. How's the small spark ball? Any dud powers to be aware of? They do mostly look worth taking, other than probably the T8 and T9 in the armour set. Any groovy proc synergies? Is the chain heal in the ancillary power pool worthwhile? What's the conventional wisdom on the Sentinel ATOs? Presumably the Opportunity one goes in a spammable power and the Absorb one goes in an AoE? Or is it skippable? Thank you!

Nah. Confuse her. Confuse is conferred to pets, so it suddenly turns her into a very useful ally. Frostfire can still absolutely hammer players - if you're playing solo story stuff in order, he is categorically the hardest foe you'll have come up against.

Rad and spines are, in my opinion, slightly clunky but not bad. Both of them feel slow dude to some of the animations, but are actually very solid. Rad has an attack that works as a heal and generates some splash damage with the Contamination effect. Your damage aura is actually a patch, which makes very little difference in practical terms. Spines has a ranged attack, which is something of a novelty on a melee archetype.

Storm/Water is one of the most fun "everything is chaotic but I can't see anything" combinations. It's really fun, synergises really well, and you absolutely cannot see anything on your screen. 10/10.

Good annoying. They aren't a complete steamroll, and I like that. Carnival of Shadows are bad annoying. The phasing and the phantams. They can be neutered pretty instantly with Confuse, but that's beside the point.

You'e seen Veracor, get ready for Veramore. * ba dum tshh. Seinfeld noises. *

Or @tidge I'll throw in another suggestion for the "epic archetypes" - widows, soldiers, peacebringers and kheldians. They're all hybrids and have self-buffing or team support capability. The other alternative would be to dip into the power pools and pick and choose what you play with - CoH's archetypes are a lot more freeform than WoW's classes. My main main is a fortunata "blood widow", so melee capable but can also mez and do some ranged AoE damage, as well as having respectably high defence and team AoE buffs. Kheldians are similar in vibe to WoW's druids in the shapeshifting, only you don't explicitly lean into one form quite as much (unless you want to). They're quirky, but they're fun to play.

I hate to admit this, Snarks, but more and more your posts speak to my very soul. Grumpy Mostly Solo Mostly Story Players Unite (solo, and in their own time, in zones that do not connect).

Same. I checked the other day and I have 850 reward merits just there.

As someone who regularly runs story content at lower levels, the answer is usually this: /macro_image "DayJob_XPBoost" "XP Toggle" "option_toggle noxp" Copy and paste it into your chat bar and press enter. XP scaling in this game is almost totally unrelated to how you actually play content if you're doing story arcs. At low levels, you probably get too much XP. It sort of evens out by level 35ish. I'd argue that at from level 40 onwards, you probably get slightly too little.

Err, not explicitly, but apart from the procs and a bit of recharge, I don't think the bonuses from purples are that great. They kind of solve problems that fortunatas don't have, if that makes sense? I'm sure you could come up with something with some experimentation, though.

I have more than one Peacebringer with almost identical builds. They're... different heroes. I couldn't just rebrand one. Also, due to the way levelling works, it's much more fun to level at a glacial pace than go in and out of Ouro every twenty minutes with a team locked in task force mode for it. My current slow levelling character is a combination of those two ideas... a peacebringer doing every mission I can find in every level band.

I have a dark/dark tanker that I really enjoy. I think the two powersets were really designed to be used together as they have a good number of AoE powers that work similarly. If you can deal with using Hover to mitigate knockback, it's a fun combo.