Muon_Neutrino

Only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that that is at *least* a billion influence build - probably lots more. I don't often check the prices of the biggest shinies, but with 2 of the most in-demand purple sets and a PvP set, it's gonna be massively expensive. I hope you have lots of cash hanging around.

Aside from that, while ToD has poor acc enhancement values, that build is also rocking 50% global acc, so I wouldn't sweat it - especially since you'll be doing a bit of defense debuffing too. Worry more about finding the money.

I'm no uber scrapper guru, so I'm sure Bill Z or someone will be along shortly to actually critique the build. Just wanted to warn you about the cost in case you were somehow unaware.

Yeah, referencing mynx and silver mantis, there *are* some EBs which are bigger than usual pains in the rear.

Positron is one - he's got massive quantities of defense debuffs, has a nuke and a nasty defense-based godmode, and can debuff you in many other nasty ways as well. He doesn't seem to have RI, so he doesn't have any *auto-hit* defense debuffs, but there's still that 5% chance, and once he hits you, you can kiss your defense goodbye.

Mynx is another - she's got more than one ranged attack, and her defense means you have to pack yellows as well, cutting into your stock of reds/greens/blues. She's also fast, attacks quickly, and has a defense-based godmode. You'll need yellows to cut through elude, or very careful timing to get the triangles to drop just when her health is getting low enough for her to use it - if you can't bust elude, she'll just outlast your purples and tear you up.

And then, there's Synapse. Dear god, Synapse. As far as I can tell, he's completely immune to immobilization and slows. He also runs at lightning speed, has lots of ranged attacks, and has an *AUTO-HIT* PBAoE damage/KB power in his version of whirlwind. All meaning that there's no way to avoid getting hit. Pack extra greens against him!

Also, even though they each only appear in a single mission, don't forget Woodsman and Zenflower. Both are basically plant controllers, and they're both real pains. Zenflower has fly trap and carrion creepers, and woodsman can summon hordes of tuatha. Both cause the same problems - distracting any pets you may have, getting in the way, and drastically increasing the number attacks directed at you. Also, although I can't find it in their power lists, I could have sworn they both had *something* which debuffed my defense.

Silver mantis is tougher than usual, but I didn't find her as difficult as any of the above EBs for some reason. She killed me once, but that's not that uncommon. She did take a long time to finally take down, but as long as I didn't stand in the caltrops, it wasn't that bad. Looking at her powers, though, I can't figure out *why* it wasn't that bad, seeing the amount of defense debuffs she has! Perhaps I just got lucky.

Well, you more or less have the method. Ignore your primary (more or less) and load up on insps.

It's a sad truth, but there's not much of anything your powers are going to do to actually keep you alive against a PToD EB. Possibly stoney could tank some of them, since he has taunt in his attacks (but you don't have stoney), and you can always immobilize them outside of melee, but it's a rare EB that won't just shoot your face off anyway. Illusion, if we had it, might be able to do better, but we don't. Power surge from the Mu epic might be able to slow your defeat, and hibernate can help you recover from a nasty hit, but neither can really get the job done on their own.

What I like to do is use medium purples - two of those will soft cap your defense for one minute, and since you only need two instead of the four you'd need with small purples, your insp tray lasts a lot longer. Medium purples aren't usually expensive on the market, so just place a few bids every time you log out and you should keep yourself stocked easily enough. Aside from that, load your tray up with reds and a few greens/blues, make sure you've got dom ready for an end refill, and just try to spike him down before you run out of purples. In the vast majority of cases, that's about all you can do. It sucks, but that's the price we pay for being so much fun everywhere else.

Quick, before nominations close, I want to toss my hat into the ring for a couple arcs.

To ensure it gets into the finals, I'm going to second the nomination for...

Best Serious Arc:
Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine, Act I #1013 @Turgenev


And then, because I'm shocked this hasn't been added already, I'll nominate:

Best Multi-Part Arc:
Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine, Acts I and II (#1013 and ????)

(I can't add the second arc's number at the moment because this computer doesn't have CoH on it, and the arc's thread seems to have poofed. Am I allowed to nominate it anyway, since I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to find the arc, given the information provided?)

Well, in no particular order:

Take freeze ray and petrifying gaze as soon as they become available. Skip bitter freeze ray. Petrifying gaze often gets a bad rap, but it's got the same hold as BFR, recharges faster, and costs less end - not to mention showing up much earlier. Take FR and PG, and go forth and hold bosses. You don't really need a third hold that much, but if you really want one (or you want to replace PG with a better hold), take dominate from the psi mastery when you get high enough - it's got an accuracy bonus and a longer hold duration than PG or BFR.

Tar patch + rain powers = very happy defenders and very unhappy baddies! Defender ice storm and blizzard do blaster level damage (in fact, the powers simply summon the blaster versions of the pseudopets), and if you've got both of those falling on a tar patch, aint nothing gonna get out of that area before the rains are done. Ice isn't normally known as an AoE set, but paired with a resistance debuffing or damage buffing defender primary, you can really put out some orange numbers over a wide area.

If you're looking for powers to skip, my personal choices would be: black hole, bitter freeze ray, and aim. The first two are completely unneeded, and while aim is useful (perhaps take it in the 40s if you have room), it's less useful than the rest of the powers in each set. (Alternatively, you could skip frost breath instead of aim, but I like my AoEs.)

Ice gets its 3rd single target blast late - it doesn't show up until 28. Unless your duo partner is a ST damage specialist, I would probably suggest going fly, so that you can get air superiority for another attack in the early game. With all of the tohit debuffs you can throw around, you can get away with darting into melee with the occasional baddie.

For dark, your main debuff is -tohit. Between slotted darkest night and unslotted fearsome stare, you can floor the tohit of even con enemies. With only some tohit debuff slotting in fearsome stare, you can floor +1s, and if you max out fearsome stare, you can floor +2s. Yes, fearsome stare is a tohit debuff power as much as it is a fear - it%Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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s the best power in the set, no contest. 6 slot that bad boy with a mix of accurate tohit debuff (or normal tohit debuff) and fear sets to get as much enhancement of both elements as possible. Similarly, the biggest thing dark servant does is tohit debuffs - slot him with a bit of acc, and then max his tohit debuff.

Yes, hunstman is shorthand for a wolf build that takes a few of the bane tricks. If you're interested, an extremely good guide to the huntsman can be found here.

Finally (finally finally) got a level 50 hero, after playing for more than two years - me and my brother pushed our defender/blaster duo from 41 to 50 through some RWZ story arcs, a manti TF, and several very well-run ITFs. It's a nice relief to finally have those characters all the way to 50 - they've been stuck at 41 ever since my brother's sub lapsed a few months ago (he's waiting for GR). Now I have one 50 on each side - and I get to make kheldians! Yay!

Heh, I'm glad that the one I got dropped far enough back that it was still worth something when I sold it.

I think that was less than a month before it was changed.

That was me.

I think it was friday when I wrote that - and I *really* needed the dose of levity by that point. It had been kinda an exhausting week.....

I stand by what I said - you have a hilarious character there, and you write he/she/it/them extremely well. You have a positive talent for coming up with just the perfect hilarious non-sequiter lines.

My personal wishes:

Dark Miasma for controllers. Give me the awesome fast-recharging every-spawn control of fearsome stare and the extra single-target hold, and I will make a control beast the likes of which the world has never seen (which, of course, is why it hasn't been proliferated yet).

Ninjitsu for scrappers. Ninjas can be heroes too, darnit! Plus, I'm sick of using SR for my characters that have an evasive concept.

Fire blast for defenders. I assume thermal would come along with it, and I wouldn't mind that, but fire blast is what I want. I have a concept, and I want the fire blasts to fulfill it, darnit! Plus, it would be *awesome*. Defenders usually have the mitigation to not rely on their blasts' secondary effects, so having said secondary effect be 'MOAR DAMAGE' would be quite welcome.

A secondary for blasters which I would call 'body manipulation' - basically, martial arts attacks and some 'natural' style self-buffs. More or less, it'd be the 'natural' secondary for the more guns-blazing 'action' style of blaster (as opposed to the 'tricksy' style character who would take devices).

Ice armor and melee for other melee ATs. I don't really care which ones, although stalkers in particular seem to fit the concept well. I just want ice melee as a primary - see if it works out better that way.

'Natural' or 'Blade' assault for doms: A secondary that mixes non-superpowered melee and ranged attacks. 'Natural' assault would probably be pistol + martial arts, 'blade' assault would probably be single sword attacks + thrown weapons. Because it's silly that every dom has to have big, flashy explodey attacks.

Illusion control for doms. We all know this would be awesome. Unleash the carnage!

One thing that I've noticed reading the guide is that you don't mention the recharge intensive pet sets. I imagine that they weren't around when you first wrote this, but given how careful you are to mention the traditional difficulties with getting recharge into pets, I'm surprised you didn't add the RIP sets when you updated the guide.

The other thing that could stand to be written up is the 5th power that i16 added to each patron pool: arctic breath, shatter armor, static discharge (MORE AOE! ), and darkest night. I think there could be some interesting possibilities among them.

Those are nitpicks, really, though. I've always thought this was an extremely informative guide, and the only thing that's stopped me from building one is that I haven't come up with a concept I like yet. Eventually, though, I will, and I wanted to thank you for getting this idea out where I could find out about it.

Heh, I wish I had seen that thread when it first started. Considering my overall laziness and thrifty spending, a few hundred million in investment dividends could last me forever, and then I wouldn't have to spend any effort making money to frankenslot my characters.

Yeah, the distinction between effort put forth in game versus time spent outside of the game is interesting. In-game, I would readily define myself as a 'casual' player. I play less than 10 hours per week, have exactly one 50, don't really use the market beyond selling drops, don't get on very many task forces or big events, don't farm, don't PvP, have tons of alts (most below 20), and in general I just spend my time in-game faffing about and having fun without much in the way of goals.

However, I spend a lot of time thinking about CoH outside the game, read the forums daily, am semi-addicted to planning out mids builds, love the mini-game of planning out cheap IO frankenslotting builds (which is the only place I differ from the OP's definition of casual - I don't think I've slotted more than a dozen or so SOs the entire time I've been here), and I consider myself more knowlegable about game mechanics than 99% or so of players (although probably not 99% of the forumites).

In other words, I'm a casual gamer with the knowlege and out-of-game time investment normally belonging to a much more serious player. Like Chompie said, it doesn't make me not a casual gamer - it just means I like thinking about the game as least as much as I do playing it. There's at least two axes to your involvement in the game - some of us are just more focused in one, and some are more focused in the other.

My personal picks (without having read the rest of the thread so as to not be influenced):

Blaster: Fire/Energy. Great AoE, great ST, strong at both ranged damage and blaps, some self buffs, not much mitigation. The blaster AT in a nutshell.

Tanker: Invulnerability/Super strength. The image of Superman as the iconic 'brick' type character is just too ingrained in culture for anything else to fit.

Scrapper: Claws/Regeneration. Because when you want to kill something, 6 blades are always better than 1, and downtime? What's that? Why would you ever want to stop? That's the scrapper mindset.

Defender: Radiation/Radiation. I can do anything. Name a buff or debuff, and odds are I've got it. And since for the longest time, if you saw green eye-lasers heroside you were looking at a defender, rad blast sorta comes along for the ride.

Controller: Earth/Storm. Because nothing says 'I CONTROL YOUR WORLD' like stopping 3 or 4 spawns in their tracks and then grinding up half of them before the mezzes even run out. Not to mention the whole 'I can hit you with the power of an entire freakin PLANET' vibe.

And, on the red side:

Brute: Super Strength/Willpower. Because when I think Brute, I think of an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction that just keeps on coming, no matter what.

Stalker: Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu. Yeah, I know, it's a cliche, but it's that way for a reason. Nothing says 'death from the shadows' like a 3 foot length of exquisitely sharp steel suddenly growing out from your target's heart.

Dominator: Mind control/Fiery assault. What's the only thing more evil than fiendishly ripping apart the fragile minds of do-gooders and innocents alike? Ripping apart their minds and then incinerating their bodies! Muhahahahahah!

Mastermind: Robotics/Traps. It's every sci-fi villain cliche in one! The unstoppable army of cold, unfeeling robotic minions, the fiendish array of lethal (and not-so-lethal) booby-traps, the slightly comical-looking ray-gun... All that's missing is a giant bald head and a properly imposing secret-trapdoor-equipped throne room!

Corruptor: Fire blast/Dark Miasma. Hellfire raining from the sky, explosions of purest demon-spawned flame, insidious meres of grasping, chill darkness, visions of gibbering terror from the deepest pits of hell - yeah, someone's about to have a really bad day.

And now to look at the rest of the thread to see how many times each of these has been mentioned already...

Simple answer - the info that you read is wrong, no portion of acid arrow is autohit. Thus, you'll need acc to give that damage proc a chance to go off.

(At least, unless city of data is wrong, which I haven't seen yet)

No, that's not the way it works. When you respec, it moves all of your current enhancements into a sort of 'holding area' - once you've finalized your power/slot choices, it takes you to an enhancement screen where you can move all of your enhancements back from that holding area into your powers. You only lose IOs if you can't fit them back into your powers or into your enhancement tray.

edit: doh - scooped by 1 minute!

I would not do that. It is true that IH and MOG are often used reactively, but they are such *strong* self-buffs that they far outweigh the extremely small benefits scrappers get out of the leadership toggles (our AT modifiers mean that we don't get as large of boosts from leadership as many other ATs).

The only leadership toggle I would really consider, and this only if you don't have to drop anything important to get it, is assault. It's only 10.5% damage, but that's still actually a noticable amount. Maneuvers on a scrapper is an utterly negligible 2.275% defense, which will make effectively no difference in 99% of cases. Tactics is 7% tohit, but honestly if you've slotted your powers decently, you shouldn't have a problem hitting most opponents.

Moment of glory and IH, on the other hand, are extremely strong buffs, even if they aren't up all the time. MoG is 15 seconds of effectively complete invincibility - you can take any alpha with that tool. IH is your 'godmode' - it takes a heck of a lot of damage to kill you while that's running. Both are integral componenets of any /regen build.

Well, first off, static discharge is *not* a drain power in any way. It does stop recovery, but only for 4 seconds, and it doesn't actually drain a meaningful amount of endurance. It will do effectively *nothing* in regards to endurance.

On the other hand, static discharge is the only AoE *damage* you get in /elec, and it's not a bad one. The question ultimately is, do you want any AoE damage? Personally, I wouldn't skip it - it's nice to be able to toss out at least *one* AoE on teams.