Muon_Neutrino

Don't bother slotting for defense debuff. Between all of your blasts, you already have tons, probably well more than you'll ever need in 99.9% of situations. Fulfill your blaster destiny and slot for damage.

So I was looking at this drop stats script that's been put together, and I noticed that the page says that it won't work very well for characters that aren't level 50 - it will fail the heuristic rank check. Does this mean that it won't be able to identify the rank of enemy mobs at all? I was thinking of grabbing it since I've been running around perez park sweeping lots of stuff with my plant controller anyway, but if it won't be able to properly total stuff up, it seems like it'd kinda be a waste.

One question: do these events tend to start exactly at the posted hour, or is that just 'when everyone starts showing up' and teams kick off a few minutes later? I ask because I have tutoring that ends at exactly 9. I can probably sneak out 5 minutes early, but I'm still likely to log on sometime around 9:05 or 9:10. I'm hoping that all of the teams haven't left by then.

Hmm, you played JK2? Nice. Still think that one got saber combat the best. No fancy schmancy junk, just red, blue, yellow, and skill.

I think by the time me and my brother got into it, the online scene was already winding down. Your tenure probably didn't overlap with ours, although for some reason the name 'Aoshi' sounds familiar. I was never spectactularly good at it, though my brother was one of the better duelists for a while. (neither one of us could shoot to save our lives, though!) Was a really good game, even though I never did finish the single player part due to a serious overdose of endless pits (that kind of stuff makes me dizzy, even in video games ).

I think it might be worth making a distinction between 'big IO builds' and 'SO/generic IO/frankenslotting builds' in this case. I have a feeling that the 'top tier, middle tier, bottom tier' ranking of the various armorsets might be considerably different between the two types - for example, it could be argued that SR is only middle tier without IOs.

I'm going electric armor/stone melee as well, although I've got bright yellow electricity and the lava theme with a neutral stone base and bright yellow lines (mutant powers awakened by being caught in the electrical explosion of some mining equipment, and then being buried in the resulting cave-in). Man I love power customization!

Stone melee is by far my favorite melee set, and so it was a natural choice to go with electric. Also, the added mitigation should help to shore up any weaknesses elec/ may turn out to have (and lightning reflexes should really help /stone's slow recharging attacks). And I must admit I'm a sucker for characters with more active, tactically-interesting mitigation like fault, energize, and power sink.

Trying to go for a relatively cheap build, mostly frankenslotting and a little S/L defense, with a couple of slightly more expensive uniques donated by my high level defender. Not sure on the availability of all of these sets, but whatever. Skipping stamina will be an interesting experiment - I really wanted those free power slots.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

GeoFlare: Level 50 Mutation Tanker
Primary Power Set: Electric Armor
Secondary Power Set: Stone Melee
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Earth Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Charged Armor -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg:30(9), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:30(9), RctvArm-ResDam:30(19)
Level 1: Stone Fist -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(3), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(7), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(17), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(34), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:30(42)
Level 2: Stone Mallet -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(3), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(5), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(17), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(37), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:30(43)
Level 4: Heavy Mallet -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(5), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(7), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(34), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(37), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:30(40)
Level 6: Static Shield -- EndRdx-I:30(A)
Level 8: Grounded -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+:30(A), S'fstPrt-ResKB:30(50)
Level 10: Conductive Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg:30(11), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:30(11), RctvArm-ResDam:30(19)
Level 12: Energize -- Tr'ge-Heal/Rchg:30(A), Tr'ge-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg:30(13), H'zdH-Heal/Rchg:30(13), H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg:30(15), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg:30(15)
Level 14: Boxing -- Acc-I:30(A)
Level 16: Taunt -- Mocking-Taunt/Rchg:30(A), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg/Rng:30(46), Mocking-Taunt/Rng:30(46), Mocking-Acc/Rchg:30(46)
Level 18: Lightning Reflexes -- Run-I:30(A)
Level 20: Fault -- Stgr-Acc/Rchg:30(A), Stgr-Acc/Stun/Rchg:30(21), Rope-Acc/Rchg:30(21), Rope-Acc/Stun/Rchg:30(25), Rope-Acc/Stun:30(31), Dsrnt-I:30(33)
Level 22: Lightning Field -- M'Strk-Acc/Dmg:30(A), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(23), Dmg-I:30(23), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc:30(25), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx:30(29), Efficacy-EndMod:30(31)
Level 24: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg:30(33), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:30(33), RctvArm-ResDam:30(34)
Level 26: Power Sink -- Efficacy-Acc/Rchg:30(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg:30(27), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg:30(27), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx:30(29), Efficacy-EndMod:30(31), RechRdx-I:30(42)
Level 28: Combat Jumping -- Ksmt-ToHit+:30(A)
Level 30: Super Jump -- Jump-I:30(A)
Level 32: Power Surge -- Lock-Acc/Rchg:45(A), Lock-Rchg/Hold:45(50)
Level 35: Tremor -- Erad-Dmg:30(A), Erad-Acc/Rchg:30(36), Erad-Dmg/Rchg:30(36), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:30(36), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:45(37)
Level 38: Seismic Smash -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(39), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(39), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(39), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:30(40), Hold-I:30(40)
Level 41: Salt Crystals -- LgcRps-Acc/Rchg:30(A), LgcRps-EndRdx/Sleep:30(42), LgcRps-Acc/EndRdx:30(43), LgcRps-Acc/Sleep/Rchg:30(43)
Level 44: Fossilize -- Para-Acc/Rchg:30(A), Para-Acc/Hold/Rchg:30(45), Lock-Rchg/Hold:40(45), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold:40(45)
Level 47: Stalagmites -- AirB'st-Acc/Dmg:40(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg:40(48), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg:40(48), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg:40(48), Rope-Acc/EndRdx:40(50)
Level 49: Quick Sand -- TmpRdns-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow:40(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I:40(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
------------
Set Bonus Totals:

• 8.5% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 8.5% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 18.6% Defense(Smashing)
• 18.6% Defense(Lethal)
• 3% Defense(Fire)
• 3% Defense(Cold)
• 11.8% Defense(Energy)
• 11.8% Defense(Negative)
• 3% Defense(Psionic)
• 10.8% Defense(Melee)
• 7.38% Defense(Ranged)
• 3% Defense(AoE)
• 3.6% Max End
• 2% Enhancement(Knockback)
• 2% Enhancement(Knockup)
• 4% Enhancement(Sleep)
• 147.6 HP (7.88%) HitPoints
• Knockback (Mag -4)
• Knockup (Mag -4)
• MezResist(Held) 2.75%
• MezResist(Immobilize) 17.1%
• MezResist(Sleep) 3.3%
• 7% (0.12 End/sec) Recovery
• 20% (1.56 HP/sec) Regeneration
• 0.95% Resistance(Fire)
• 0.95% Resistance(Cold)
• 2% RunSpeed

Mud pots definitely, and perhaps hurl boulder if you've got a ranged attack or two in your primary.

Mud pots just doesn't seem to me like it meshes very well with anything a dom does. It's got a tiny radius, and only really does a lot of damage if you spend a long time in melee with multiple opponents - and even though doms *do* melee, as squishies we don't usually stand toe-to-toe with large numbers of foes for a long time. I don't really see much use for the minor slow and immobilize, either - if the foes you're meleeing aren't already controlled, I doubt they'll make much difference, and if the foes *are* already controlled, they won't do anything at all.

Hurl boulder, on the other hand, doesn't have a playstyle mismatch - it's just got a glacially slow animation. I wouldn't skip it normally, as having just one ranged attack seems a bit much, but if you've got something like lift, levitate, or mesmerize, I could see skipping hurl boulder.

Most dom primaries have at least a skippable AoE immobilize, and some have other skippables (such as propel or salt crystals), so having only one skippable in the secondary isn't *too* bad.

One thing you can probably do is drop some attacks. Since you have to take it anyway, boxing can stand in for thunder kick (boxing is better than kick, looks less dumb, and while it's not as good as thunder kick, it's still passable). Similarly, you probably don't need to take all of storm kick, crane kick, CAK, and eagle's claw if you already have boxing and air sup - especially with the recharge boost /elec provides.

As far as stamina goes, I'm not sure. I'm planning my tanker build without stamina, but he only has tough, not weave. Hopefully someone has some experience trying this on a brute and can chime in.

Well, I've had three online names over the years. The first was rather childish, and I eventually swapped it out for a reference to a book series. I used that name for a good long time, but I decided I wanted a different name to use in counter strike - one people would be less likely to recognise and pester me about in the middle of a round. I decided that *this* name would reference my overriding passion in life - physics and astronomy, and so I decided to pick the name of an obscure particle. Thus, MuonNeutrino was born.

Neutrinos are weird, ghostly, almost massless particles that barely interact with normal matter. Muon neutrinos are the variety associated with the muon, a heavier cousin of the electron. I feel that it reflects me rather well. I am a huge geek - check. I am mostly a lurker, and extremely shy in RL - check. I am strange and full of obscure references - check.

Eventually, I decided that I didn't like my old name - said book series had long ended and my interest had waned, and I found that I *hated* what they had done to the characters in the subsequent series. Thus, whenever I signed up for something new (such as CoH), I used MuonNeutrino - although it is just my handle, I have no characters named that. Eventually I shortened it to just Muon in counterstrike, but everywhere else on the internet (bar one message board where I still have my old name) I am known as MuonNeutrino.

The 'no purpling your warshade' one is a brilliant idea, but it could do with some cleaning up. The warshade icon is rather low resolution, and there are some issues with the transparency around the edges. You can get really high res AT icons off of the city of data page, if you want.

edit: For that matter, would the original nice clean icon and enhancement images be visible in the game directory somewhere, or are they hidden inside those pigg files we're not allowed to mess with?

If you really really hate knockback, the only secondary you really would have to avoid is energy. All the others only have knockback on a single power, if that, and said power is usually not mandatory.

Archery - explosive arrow (TAoE 50% chance for KB)
Dark Blast - torrent (cone KB, tiny damage, skippable)
Psy - TK blast (60% knockback, high damage - single target, so NOT really melee unfriendly. Side note: Psi tornado is knockUP, so also not melee unfriendly)
Rad - electron haze (cone AoE - only 25% chance for knockback)
Sonic - shockwave (cone KB, minor damage (though more than torrent), no resistance debuff)

As you can see, about the only one of those that is really unskippable is TK blast - and /psi has a good strong ST chain, so if you knock back a target with TK blast, you're likely going to be killing it anyway. As a melee, I find that it's mostly AoE knockback that is annoying. ST knockback isn't bad, as long as you make an effort to avoid KBing the meleer's current target.

Empathy and kin play well with most blast sets, but you may consider one with some personal mitigation - emp is all about buffing others, and kin is all-offense, all the time, so they both could use a bit of self-defense in the blast set. Ice, dark, electric, psi, and sonic all come to mind (although sonic's mitigation is mostly solo-oriented). Kin also plays well with /rad - all those defense debuffs help ensure your kin/ powers hit.

Mine is probably going to be a grav/earth. On test, I used the lava skin for earth and colored both the grav and earth powers red and black - the general idea was some sort of blood mage.

Well, most everyone agrees that propel is skippable on a dom. It does do a fair amount of damage, but the animation is so glacially slow that you're almost always better off just using powers from your secondary instead. It is a fun power, and pretty good on controllers thanks to containment (and they don't have a secondary full of attacks), but on a dom it's pretty lackluster. On the other hand, take lift - it got buffed in issue 15, and it compensates nicely for /elec's lack of a 3rd ranged attack.

Aside from that, you probably don't need both immobs. I would likely skip the AoE one, as it has a bad accuracy, does very little damage, and costs a ton of end. The only real use for it is to immob stuff after a wormhole, but they don't really stagger *that* far. The single target one, on the other hand, is pretty useful for keeping tough melee-oriented EBs out of your face.

Dimension shift can also be skipped. It does have some utility as a panic button, but honestly not *that* much. I've never found much use for it. (On the other hand, take grav distortion field. You need a backup for wormhole.)

On the /elec side, I would skip zzap. Snipes are only really useful as an opening attack, and as a dom you have much more important things to start the fight with (like, oh, controls). The rest of the set is pretty good.

Sister Flame's arc is one of those ones that just doesn't get old. Every once in a while, I'll come back to run it with a new character, or just one that hasn't seen it in a while, and it's always fun.

This time it was my FF/nrg Longbow defender, who was quite pleased to have an offense-happy blaster to cast shields on. As you can see, they had such a great time that afterwards they decided to have a bubble party!



Man, Sister Flame is tall! At some point, I'm gonna have to get the science booster so I can resize him to match the height of the longbow NPCs, although I have a feeling Sister Flame will still be taller than him.

edit: Hmm, that was a really big picture. Huge picture banished to here

Folonius, look at your combat channel and read off the enemy tohit chances from these bosses. You will find them to exactly match what the tohit formula predicts. The only way the enemies would have a lower chance to hit you at 65% than 45% is if they have tohit bonuses, or if they were debuffing your defense and the extra 20% provided a cushion against that.

Simply trying to count hits, especially over such a short time period, isn't going to give reliable results. If you really want to try and gather reliable data to show the effect you are reporting, get herostats and record a statistically significant number of missions.

There will be two types of missions which will have reduced XP (and thus, I presume, tickets).

The first type are missions where the enemy group consists of less than the full 3 different ranks of enemies - for example, the classic 'boss farms'. If you get onto a map and it doesn't have minions, lieutenants, and bosses, it won't give very much xp (although, if you are solo, the map might not spawn bosses anyway - that won't lower your XP. It's only if the enemy group for the mission doesn't *have* all three ranks in it).

The second type of mission which will give reduced XP are those with custom enemies who have had their powers reduced below the 'standard' setting. Normally, you can set the enemies' power sets to 'standard', 'hard', or 'extreme' to give them varying amounts of powers. You can also set them to 'custom', which gives them the powers from the 'standard' setting but allows you to choose specific powers to add to that. In issue 16, the 'custom' setting will no longer have the requirement to take the 'standard' powers - in fact, you can even give them no powers at all - but if they don't have at least the 'standard' powers, they will give no XP.

Aside from that, the rest of the missions will still give decent amounts of XP. You just need to avoid the usual boss farms, and pay attention to see if any custom enemies you are fighting are giving you XP.

It is possible to use hurricane without an immob. It's easiest if you have a corner, but it's not mandatory. The key is slows - drop snow storm on a spawn as you try to bunch them together, and it makes it a lot harder for them to escape. Similarly, drop freezing rain on the first few to reach your target point, and the flopping and slow will prevent them from moving away. This is still not as easy as herdicaning with an immob or corner, but it's a heck of a lot easier than just using hurricane alone.

As for skipping hurricane and tornado, that is honestly not a very good idea. I can somewhat understand it from the perspective of his /storm troller (even if I don't agree) - as a controller, he has other mitigation tools to rely on. As a defender, though, hurricane is one of your primary defensive and offensive tools, tornado is an important damage power, and hurricane and tornado working together are your panic button. I don't consider either of them to be skippable.

Regarding this particular combo, if you're looking for things you can skip or put off, I'd say thunder clap, bitter freeze ray, aim, and one of gale or o2 boost are your choices. Freeze ray is not optional. Not only does it have a quick recharge and decent duration for a non-control AT mez, it also bestows knockback immunity to its target for 10 seconds. This allows tornado to utterly grind a boss to pieces, while even keeping him permanently held once freeze ray is slotted up.

edit: also, regarding the build you posted while I was writing this, take freeze ray earlier. Like, as soon as it becomes available. At the very least swap hasten with it, as hasten isn't really needed as much before you have tornado and lightning storm. More preferably, put off fly a bit and get freeze ray early. There are so many temporary travel powers available nowadays, you can *easily* ride on those until 30.

With just SOs? Um, well.... frankly, with just SOs, it's a very pretty way to spend a small amount of endurance. I honestly don't see any way to make it do anything worthwhile with just SOs. Even with slots, it *is* more or less garbage. It *does* look pretty, though, no denying that.

Enhanced with (say) 2 acc, 2 confuse, 2 dam, every 4 seconds it'll do a bit more than half of an unslotted brawl's worth of damage to each enemy in range (8 feet - very short) and have a roughly 50-80% chance (depending on level) to confuse minions for up to 2.5 seconds. Given the relatively small number of attacks minions usually have, it's quite possible for the confusion to do exactly nothing if they don't have any attacks recharged during the confuse period.

In other words, it does a trivial amount of damage, and may cause a very slight reduction in the number of melee attacks minions get off. Given how fast blasters usually drop minions with their AoEs, it effectively does nothing of any real note. The upside is that the end cost is quite low (0.13 end/s) and it doesn't aggro, so at least you don't really cause yourself any *harm* by running it.

The only real strong use I've ever seen WoC put to is to slot it with the purple confuse set 'chance for contagious confusion' proc. This proc has a chance to cast a small AoE confuse around its targets, so with that proc WoC can actually confuse a decent number of targets (and stronger ones, too) for a duration which isn't *completely* trivial. However, even that purple set is likely to be quite expensive nowadays (although I haven't checked recently), and that's only available at 50.

Aside from that, WoC is basically just pretty. Nothing wrong with taking it for that reason if you've got the spare slot, but just be aware of what you're actually getting (or not getting, in this case).

Hmm, I hope i16 is out by then. I've got an elec/ tank concept percolating in the back of my head just waiting till I can make him on live, and I'd love to start it off with a TT event.

Honestly, though, does the difference in +tohit actually matter? I don't know about everyone, but I don't usually see many people having major accuracy problems, at least not later in the game. By then, I rather doubt that there is really a functional difference between 10% tohit, 15% tohit, and 18.75% tohit - all of them are likely to be more than most people need most of the time (and since WoP doesn't even come into play until 28, there's not much point in comparing them earlier on).

And why slot fort/WoP for tohit anyway? I'd imagine it'd be far more important to cap recharge and def/res, and if I managed that in only 5 or 4 slots, I'd rather spend any extras elsewhere.