Muon_Neutrino

I have a shield/WM tank (not specifically made following this guide, but turned out fairly close), and I just want to put in a good word for buildup. While it is true that this can be a tight build and buildup isn't absolutely essential, I think it is definitely worth the pick.

One thing in support of buildup that isn't as obvious is the fact that, if you do what I did and slot all your AoEs with the uber-cheap positional defense-granting multistrike, you won't really have very much recharge in them. I can still keep a decent rotation of AoEs going, but it's nowhere near seamless, and shield charge in particular could easily come back 20 seconds faster if I max slotted it. I personally consider that a extremely worthy tradeoff for the great defensive bonuses and value, but it's a drawback nonetheless.

Having buildup boosts your initial round of AoEs. This is, of course, nothing new, but I think it's especially welcome here since it helps compensate for their slower recharges compared to a more offensively-oriented slotting. Convienently enough, one slotted for recharge it syncs up with shield charge almost perfectly, so it also requires no slotting. Given such an offensively-oriented primary I really would rather capitalize on it to the greatest extent that I can without compromizing durability, and having buildup allows me to have my cake and at least partially eat it too.

After taking all of my primary, 7/9 from the secondary (less buildup and pulverize), stamina, weave, and combat jumping, I've got 1 power left. Given the amazing usefulness of ninja run, I honestly can't think of a better thing to spend that on than buildup, and with stamina coming for free in i19 I wouldn't imagine skipping it.

On an unrelated note, if you're planning to actually run tough+weave I would strongly suggest saving up your merits for the recovery uniques and/or a performance shifter proc. With multistrike your AoEs are pretty dang endurance efficient, but even with all three procs I can still run low at times, especially if I have to make heavy use of my ST attacks.

I usually get a costume 'mostly right' when I make the character, in that it's a costume I feel works (they don't leave the character creator unless they have one). However, I am frequently aware that it's not a perfect costume, that there are definitely improvements that could be made. Sometimes I know exactly what's missing, I just need to unlock it (a cape/aura/weapon/vet costume piece/etc), sometimes I'm just aware in a vague sense that it feels incomplete.

This usually doesn't prevent me from creating the character, as even if I can't get the 'perfect' costume right off the bat, I can usually come up with a 'decent' one. After that, if it's a character whose costume I think could be improved, I just mull it over in the back of my mind as I play the character over the subsequent weeks and months (I'm an altaholic, so I have plenty of time to do this for any given character). When I do change a costume, the alterations usually fall into one of four categories:

First, is adding pre-planned elements that I couldn't include at creation. Occasionally, these are the only changes, such as my shield/mace tank who swapped her single-shoulder vet cape for an identically-patterned normal cape at 20, gained the aura I'd always planned for her at 30, swapped her energy shield for a vanguard shield at 35, and hasn't made a single other change. Unless I think of a cool idea for an alternate costume or the devs release new costume pieces suited for her, she's 'done'. I think hers is the only costume I've gotten so right at the beginning, however.

Second is changing out old costume pieces for newly-released ones that fit the character better, such as my plant/storm controller and some of the stuff from the mutant pack.

Third is when I get a better idea on how to do a certain part of the costume, either on my own or from browsing the character creator, or from seeing it in action on another character in-game or on the forums. Of course, I'm not borrowing other costumes wholesale, but sometimes I'll see a really interesting combination of pieces or patterns that fits the costume but that I never would have thought of on my own.

Fourth, and least common, is a complete costume swap, where I decide I've come up with a new basic idea for a costume which is better than the existing one. Often this is inspired in a similar way to number three, but it's an idea that fits the *character* but not their current *costume*. My warshade and ice/ice dom are two characters where this happened - in both cases changing from a more plain/utilitarian/mundane costume to a more traditionally-styled (and more interesting) superhero/villain type costume. When this happens, though, I usually keep the original costume on an alternate slot. I don't usually come up with many alternate costumes for each character, so there's usually room.

Of course, then there's the characters where I try 8 million ideas without getting something good enough to leave the character creator, but we won't talk about those...

Yeah, the ice shield encases you in ice. The scorpion shield still has a graphical glow, but it's much less ridiculous looking than the ice one. A pity, because the powers in ice mastery really are quite decent.

First q: Yes, you need to go all the way to villain to be allowed to do the patron arc which gives you access to the patron pools. This isn't due to some nefarious villan vs hero bias (although that would be hilarious given how often people complained about devs hating villains), but simply due to the fact that the patron pools, story-wise, are tied into something which only makes sense for a villain to do.

Second q: Yes, if you go full villain and get access to patron pools, you will still have access to it even if you switch back to hero.

Third q: Yes, you *will* lose your hero merits if you change alignment to vigilante or villain, so spend em all first!

Doing a bit of number crunching, I think that you'd be fine with a tanker.

Assuming 95% damage slotting, 65% fury, and 6 targets in range of AAO, tanker damage with SC+FSC+combustion+FB compared to brute damage with SC+FSC+FB is nearly equal when buildup is in effect, and is about 88% of brute damage when buildup is not running.

Now, there are more considerations than just damage, of course. The tanker is spending ~10 more endurance and 3 seconds more of animation time to do that damage, but combustion comes at 4, where a brute has to wait until 26 for FSC (tanks get FSC at 28). Overall, though, I think you'd be fairly competitive with a tank.

Blizzard on a defender is most emphatically *NOT* skippable. I don't care if it crashes your end, it does *full blaster level damage*. The *only* higher damage nuke in the game is corruptor blizzard, and only because theirs scourges. The fact that both rain powers are on blaster scales is, in my opinion, the reason to take ice blast on a defender. Aim+ice storm+blizzard is absolutely sick AoE damage for a defender to be putting out.

Eh, between set bonuses, assault, and vigilance, my FF defender's gonna have something like +65-70% damage post-i19. Each individual 3% isn't much, but they do add up. I certainly wouldn't sacrifice defense set bonuses for them, but they're a nice secondary bonus to go for.

Keep in mind that the only time attack chain endurance sustainability calculations are actually relevant is when you're continuously using just that attack chain for a long time - i.e. AV/EB fights. The rest of the time you're highly unlikely to be using only those ST attacks over and over again, and a more realistic calculation would be 'using AoEs as fast as possible and tossing in ST attacks randomly between AoEs'. Since AoEs are quite expensive, of course, you likely won't be able to keep it up as long as your ST chain, but on the other hand it's not going to *take* very long to kill a single spawn of normal foes, as which point you have time to recover before the next spawn.

As far as your ST chain goes, it depends on whether you think you can kill a typical EB in 63 seconds. If you can, then 63s is fine. If you can't, you might want to look at ways to improve your end use.

By the way, I notice that this is an i19 build, and so you don't have stamina in your mids. Since mid's doesn't have the inherent stamina yet, the 'net recovery' numbers it's showing will be less than you'll actually have in game. Did you take the recovery you'll be getting from stamina into account when you calculated your endurance usage?

Ah, yes, knew I forgot something. Tornado isn't just 'nearly autohit', it actually *IS* autohit. Thus, it is indeed wonderful to toss on that MoG'd PP, since his defense means absolutely nothing against it.

It also does make a wonderful panic button power. Indeed, a lot of people don't ever realise it has any use *besides* a panic button! But one extra property is the small-ish defense debuff. Since it's autohit, it makes a nice lever against foes that have some defense - it doesn't have enough of a debuff to really crack a defense godmode, but it can largely nullify a basic defense shield like some CoT mobs use. And a defense debuff means that it can carry an achilles' proc, further enhancing its usefulness against EBs/AVs.

Tornado is a power that does a tiny amount of damage - but it does this damage over and over again very quickly, so it adds up. At level 50, tornado ticks for 6.67 damage twice every second. Since it lasts 30s, that adds up to (6.67 * 60 * 1.95) = ~780 damage when slotted. That is quite a lot (by comparison, slotted contain'd frost breath from the ice epic is only ~167 damage), but it is done over a 30 second DoT. The nice thing about tornado, though, is that you cast it once and then it just does its thing for 30s. You can do more damage over time with other powers, but only at the cost of using up much more animation time and endurance casting them repeatedly.

One thing to note about tornado, however, is that even if you keep -KB on the foes to prevent them from scattering, tornado's AI will still switch targets frequently. Thus, if you have a pile of somewhat spread out immobilized foes, tornado will hit one for a few seconds, jump to another, then a third, etc. It'll do that 780 damage, but spread out over several targets. On the other hand, if you've jammed all your foes into one tight immobilized clump with hurricane, the 7 foot radius on tornado's damage means that, even though it's switching targets, they're all so close to each other that it's hitting *all* of them the entire time. Thus, instead of a total of 780 damage spread out over several targets, you'll do 700+ damage to the majority of the spawn. So, if you want to use tornado as a major AoE damage source, jam things together with hurricane. (Tornado also works well against single bosses/EBs/etc as long as you clear out the riff-raff so that it can't get ADD and take off after an inoffensive minion.)

Sam - basically, they're having trouble dealing with statesman and his cheatyface version of unstoppable on the top level villain ouroborous SF. Since it's on such a short recharge he keeps hitting it and regenning so much while it's on that they can't kill him before it recharges and he does it again.

To the original poster: as some have said, the answer is -regen debuffs. If you can stop him from regenerating too much health while his unstoppable is active, once it drops you can kill him before it recharges. Some good sources of regen debuffs would be radiation's lingering radiation, dark miasma and kinetics' heals (they debuff the target as well), traps' poison trap (a *huge* debuff), cold domination's benumb, thermal's heat exhaustion, or dom psi assault/blaster mental manipulation's drain psyche.

The reason resistance debuffs won't work is that, if he has resistance to a damage type, he also has resistance to resistance debuffs of that type. That's a confusing sentence, so an example: Say an enemy has 90% resistance all damage but psi. Then, if you hit him with a 30% resistance debuff, his resistance (to everything but psi) will only decrease by 3% (10% of 30%) since his 90% resistance also gives him 90% resistance to the debuff.

Applying that to statesman, if his resistances are over 100%, then he will also be completely immune to resistance debuffs. So for any damage type with over 100% resistance, you won't be able to damage him no matter how many resistance debuffs you stack.

If I recall correctly, you were triple boxing a defender team, right? In that case, I would keep everything and stay at ~60% def. I'm sure you're going to be fighting up-level foes, so the purple patch would increase the size of any defense debuffs they might land on you. Staying at 60% (a 15% buffer) should ensure that no single defense debuff can ever drop you below 45%, even with the purple patch amping up the debuffs.

FF is certainly not the best offender primary, but you can still try to build one to contribute damage. Mine's got something like +20% damage from set bonuses, and with i19 I'll have room to add in assault. It also has an extra AoE attack and, as you mentioned, you do get plenty of time to blast. Between aim, power build up, 3 AoEs, and my nuke, I can kick out a fair amount of damage - and I still have and use almost all of my primary (and have probably the best passive protection of any defender I've seen).

True. An offender is still a defender, and one who gets too lost in blasting to use his primary isn't doing his job. That doesn't make offenders in general bad, though. It just means that, like all ATs, there exist bad offenders.

1. Are you male or female?

Male

2. What ATs do you mostly play, and for what reason(s)?

I play almost all ATs, but I tend to play defenders, controllers, tanks, and dominators most. What I like most about combat in this sort of game is the tactical possibilities. These ATs give me the most scope for interesting tactical minigames in every combat.

3. Redside, blueside, purpleside, or any combination of the above?

All of the above. Some of the character concepts I come up with are villains, some of them are heroes. Some of them make sense with the default ATs for their side, some need to go through praetoria or go rogue.

4. What are your favorite story arcs?

The issue 17 story arcs are, of course, awesome. Aside from those, I'm fond of ghost widow's patron arcs, and indeed a lot of the CoV content in general (at least when you're not running around being a lackey). The striga isle task force (whatever it's called) is also a favorite of mine, purely for that last mission. Finally, while I'm sure this wasn't exactly what you were looking for, the best arcs I've played in this game yet are Turgenev's 'Ghost in the Machine' arcs in the AE.

5. What makes you like this game?

Mechanically, the combination of reasonably deep and engaging gameplay with an extremely casual-friendly system. While I spend lots of time thinking about games, I've never really been interested in actually putting forth the effort to become 'elite' at any of them - and that would definitely include the sort of commitment expected in most MMOs. Here I can play for a few hours every now and then, still accomplish something, and not feel like I'm missing anything.

On an emotional level, while I've never been a comics reader, the superhero mythos is deeply satisfying to me. The concept of having the power to actually change the world for the better keeps me coming back every time. No fantasy MMO's setting has ever come close to inspiring me that way.

6. What other games do you play?

I'm a fan of the original Starcraft, and I've played that and diablo 2 for a long time. I also play counter-strike source, though not competitively. More recently, I've been playing borderlands. I don't own a console.

7. How long have you been playing?

I've been playing CoH/V since september 07. In terms of playing video games in general, it's been more than a decade - since before 2000.

8. How many alts do you have, what is the average level range, and how many are level 50?

Number of alts is somewhat undefined, as I have a fair number of them but some aren't likely to be played again. The number tends to hover somewhere around 20-30, however I only have three 50s (two heroes and one villain).

9. Do you bother with softcaps, set bonuses, and all that numerical stuff? What difficulty settings to you normally use?

Yes, yes, and yes. I don't bother making tons of inf to buy the most expensive IOs, but I am definitely a numbers person. I'm the sort of person who just absorbs the details of a system practically by osmosis, I can't *not* think about all that numerical stuff. I have easily three times as many mids builds as actual characters, and while I don't have the resources to softcap a non-defense based character, I did spend the inf to softcap my shield tank (and she's awesome now because of it ).

Difficulty settings vary wildly based on the character, especially since I spend so much time playing at lower levels. Most of my level 35+ characters tend to run at somewhere around +0 to +1, x1 to x4 depending on their soloing proficiency. I could probably push a lot of them higher, but I'm not really interested.

Ooh. I am *VERY* happy about the arcanatime feature - that was always such a pain to manually calculate every time. I just hope that the database editor tweaks will finally allow me to manually proliferate powersets - I always ran into tons of error messages and stuff just not working when I tried that in the past.