Iron_General

All brutes tank fine. But their builds have to be tighter. There has to be a trade off for that 750% damage cap.

I'm not sure I see the relevance of the blaster/defender comparison. No brutes I know would wait until level 41+ to take armours, and based on only the quoted S/L resists, defenders and blasters can't perform the "role of a brute" either.

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Except the box to which that clue leads one is neither black nor a 'black box' nor any type of recording device. The clue references a box, and a box is one of the clickies. The fact that the clue references a more specific type of box is irrelevant to the the hunt.

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Moreover, the term, "Black Box," is colloquial language. In fact a flight data recorder is housed in an impact resistant housing that is coated in heat-resistant paint that is always bright orange. This is so it is, in theory, easier to find among wreckage.

Stealth base def 1.75%

Maneuvers base def 2.275%

Use Mids Hero Designer or City of Data to get numbers like this: http://coh.redtomax.com/data/powers/

1. I have routinely set an ally to spawn at the front of a mission, and the ally spawns in the last room. In five tests of the same mission, the ally spawned once at the front door, and four times behind the boss in the last room.

2. In the story settings screen where you can input the information regarding your architect souvenir, the character limit is 3000 characters. Any text exceeding about 1400 characters will cause that box to flicker, as if it is trying to expand to accommodate the text but won't. The text can be read normally in the right hand pane, but the flickering makes it impossible to move the cursor in the left-hand edit pane. the flickering is especially noticeable if one attempts to paste text exceeding about 1400 characters into the box.

3. Several people who have played my arc claim that the architect souvenir is being awarded twice. I have not yet confirmed this myself.

Based on a level 44 BS/Shields scrapper

Objective:

The shields set seems very weak at lower levels. I did not concern myself much with it because (1) I was low level and (2) I'm a scrapper and should not be able to tank. At higher levels, particularly after gaining shield charge, the shields set is probably on par with other sets if played towards its strengths.

On that note, while many posts in this thread are about how shields underperforms compared to other defense sets, remember that shields primary strength is offense. Just like Firey Armor was weak compared to other resist-based sets due to its offensive nature, Shields also trades much of its damage mitigation for damage dealing. And therein lies its strength. I can "tank" as well as any other scrapper I've played (and I've played every other scrapper secondary) not because of the defense, but because I can kill things fast enough that they don't have time to hurt me. Yes, I see regular cascade failures, and have problems with widely spaced groups, but these are taken care of with inspirations. Certain enemy groups are very difficult to fight (e.g. nemesis) but that would be the same for any set.

On the negative side, the endurance usage of the set is horrendous. Stamina won't even touch this monster... we're talking about as bad as DA if not worse, and that's without a 33 end/use heal. I'm hoping that careful IO slotting will take care of the problems (I'm still using SOs at 44).

Subjective:

Shields are cool. I love all the different costume options. I just wish they weren't so darn tiring to carry.

QR

If you have a tank taunt run up the left side and taunt the healing nictus, and immediately fall off the top step to the left side, you can pull the healing nictus out of line of sight of romulus. At the same time, the rest of the team should aggro romulus and prevent him from following (easy if you have a second taunter).

With the healing nictus out of line of sight, romulus wont be healed by the nictus, and you can put rom down four times easy.

Just as a warning, before romulus goes down the third time, you need to bring the healing nictus back into line of sight of rom. If you do, rom will rez and the healing nictus will disappear, which makes for an easy fight. If the healing nictus does not have LoS to rom, then rom dies, does not rez, and you have to fight the healing nictus instead.

The healing nictus is a much more annoying fight than rom. I'm not sure what this business is about the healing nictus not healing itself; I'm darn sure it works like stygian circle power that works on living enemies because the more characters in range of it (i.e. in melee range), the more green healing numbers above it.

Every so often I see the abbreviation QFT on the forums. What does that one stand for?

I'm level 28, running quills with the Impeded Swiftness +smashing proc and the Scirocco's +lethal proc, Death Shroud with a Scirocco's +lethal proc, and Cloak of Fear with the Glimpse of the Abyss +psi proc. With the occasional spine burst and dark regen, I don't even need to really attack otherwise! I love it