Nihilii

Regen brutes will get much more out of DP thanks to their higher HP cap, and due to that higher HP, essentially more regen as well (same % of regen but more HPs recovered).

The higher res cap also means MoG will be more efficient on brutes.

IIRC you won't be reaching 2500% regen by yourself unless you do something silly like stacking Rebirth and IH instead of alternating them.

I'm not claiming it's never going to be an issue, but other benefits brutes will get over scrappers should more than make up for it.

The biggest things that helped me with this problem were:
- Combat Jumping + Hurdle ; good, unsuppressable maneuverability, a quick small jump or two and I can get myself to where I want.
- smooth framerate ; a consistant 40 frames per second or above, and positioning gets a lot easier.z

It'd be cool, but I'm not holding my breath. See: Moment of Glory, Power Sink, Earth Embrace, Hoarfrost...

Never, ever try to estimate performance of a powerset by looking at how a select few random people performs with it.

This is especially true with popular powersets, and doubly so for sets that are popular for farming, as mediocre players will flock to these.

One important thing about CoH and widescreen resolutions : it shows less vertically rather than more horizontally. So, the bigger the ratio, the further you'll have to zoom out to keep the same amount of stuff on screen than you had before.

It's probably not a big deal if you were already on a widescreen, and it's perfectly playable regardless, but I remember it took me a few weeks to adapt going from a 1280x1024 screen to 1680x1050.

"you guys I was totally ironic"

You can always separate the nictus. Even a blaster can keep the healing nictus on him as it deals absolutely no damage. If the autohit nictus is the problem, the tanker can keep it on him at a distance, etc..

I wouldn't be so categorical myself, having team defense overkill on paper can be useful if people run out of range, out of LoS, are fighting heavy def debuffs or tohit buffs, during the eventual death of one or more team members, etc..

I will agree that you can generally do what you want and do just fine as a team of VEAT, though. It's just I also feel there is an use to more defense beyond the (IMHO) overhyped 45% defense point.

I'd go with EA for sure. I don't get the part about Clarion (mez protection) boosting your defense though. Did you mean Barrier (def + res)?

For me, most convenient = PBAoE or targeted AoE, with radius as wide as possible.

So that's SS first (15' on Foot Stomp) and SM second (15' on Tremor, lower damage and slower animation than FS), pairing it with Shield for Shield Charge (which is... 20', I think?), ideally with Ball Lightning, Dark Obliteration or Fire Ball (all 15' TAoE) as an epic choice.

I love how everytime GavinRuneblade starts a post with a quote and "FALSE", everything he says after that is wrong.

Maybe this is some kind of japanese reading thing and you're supposed to read from bottom to top.

At 70 (or even 80) Fury, your DPS would be worse on a DM/WP or DM/Inv brute than on a DM/WP or DM/Inv scrapper.

I'm having a hard time buying anyone's claim of knockback being great and useful when in the same breath they argue against the option for other players to remove it on their own powers.

Surely if knockback was that much better, you wouldn't mind if others went with knockdown instead, it'd make your own characters more powerful and superheroicy by comparison.

I soloed an ITF (with insps) with this:

I like Confront better. It only hits 1, but it's autohit, lasts three times longer and reduces range.

Then again, I pick Confront on characters without aggro aura. Provoke might make sense on a WP, provided you have the pool open... That's a big "if" though. I'd hate to skip Maneuvers, Tough/Weave, Cj or Hasten.

As for Taunt enhancements in RttC, eh. Turning a 1.25s taunt into a 1.5s taunt won't change things much, the aura ticks every second anyway doesn't it?

Edit: oh... Good point, Sarrate.

Kyria's answer is right on the money.

I have never really got the argument that anything that isn't perma isn't worthwhile. T9s, Hasten, inspirations, Lore pets, click accolades, craftable/renewable temp powers, all kind of stuff that is pretty useful perma or not and can be relied on given proper resource management.

The only situations that really hit me as having something perma to be great are Rage (no defense crash) and Domination (no domination bar crash). Other than that, eh. I get the appeal and ease-of-use of something that works at the same level of performance all the time, but I wouldn't want to work with a third of my toolbox just to avoid non-perma stuff.

I wouldn't want these temporary tools becoming perma with an appropriate nerf to their performance, either. Coming back to the Lore pets, I much prefer them doing 150 DPS part of the time than 50 DPS most of the time (exact numbers obviously meaningless, the point being, "3 times as much damage for 3 times as low uptime"), as there is a need for situational high damage with AV fights and such, which have a much higher threshold of DPS than your standard fight with at most a boss that can be defeated with a defender first tier blast alone (provided you have the survivability).

Great post, Magenta. You definitely hit the nail on the head.

Rage, Healing Flames, Fiery Embrace, Burn, Temperature Protection, Consume got direct buffs.

The rise of AE farming made the combo popular as you can cap your damage resistance while also having more offensive tools.

The Alpha slot was also an indirect but significant buff to SS/FA, as endurance consumption was a concern. It enabled the top ST chain including Gloom, which deals almost twice as much damage as average melee primaries.

I20 boosted the combo further still, arguably filling one of the only gaps that remained, lack of defense, thanks to Barrier. You also have more damage during rage crashes with Judgement and Reactive. I20.5 was yet another indirect buff, adding situational heavy -regen with the Longbow mech.

I go with ET -> EP -> TF -> BS.

Which is almost the same chain as Elegost, alternating the big hitters so I don't get stuck for 6 seconds in a row animating.

SS/FA is definitely the perfect brute.

Oops, I forgot saying "for the ITF". Or did I? Dun dun dunnnn...

SS/Inv is a solid choice for the ITF if you prefer survivability that doesn't rely on insps. I've done dozens of ITF on invul and genuinely can't remember the last time I died. If you go that route, you might as well go DM/Inv and forget about even having to watch your computer during the AV fights with Siphon Life on auto.

I don't think you can softcap a SOed SR unless you take a stupid amount of toggles ; looking at my level 46 SR right now I have 38.75% to all with 3 level 45 SOs in everything, including cj weave and maneuvers, but the softcap is another thing that I feel is overvalued in that defense is too often seen as an "all or nothing" proposition. Having ~40% def with very high DDR although not capped yet is already going to make you rather sturdy, at least for me at the kind of reputations I fight on on SOs.

It gets better once you add insps and eventual team buffs into the mix. Having someone with maneuvers isn't all that uncommon in this day and age of inherent stamina, or even receiving the right kind of magic buff/mutation can push you to the softcap.

I'm not saying Regen is all doom and gloom, sure enough you can convert everything to purples and take on a stupid amount of stuff stacking insps on top of cj/weave/maneuvers (which, unlike on the SR, won't force you to slow down/rest/use the occasional blue insp thanks to QR) for high defenses + high regen and heals. My issue with it is that if you (I?) require a certain amount of extra mitigation to pull off a certain task, you (I) will have to use it proactively, otherwise DDR / lack of res can wreck you (me) before you (me) get to say "ouch" (actually a much nastier word not suited for PG rated forums). For example, even at softcapped def or higher I find arachnos tarentula mistresses hit much more than I'd like them to with their psi defense debuff, and on x8 I think there can be up to 3 in a group (2 lieuts 1 boss). Or I could be aggroing two groups at once. Honestly, when I have two or more of these dreaded psi debuff on me, I'm too busy running around screaming to stop and do a headcount.

Elec is of course in the same boat as far as defense goes, and I won't argue it has much more time to see damage come in as DP +60% hp isn't all that different and not too much lower from Elec resists on SOs. It gets very nice offensive tools and even endurance drain, which I'm so not a fan of when we're talking IOed out builds doing tough stuff fast, becomes more useful when the rep isn't so high and the fights aren't so quickly done.

To try to sum my position on this, can regen do anything these other secondaries couldn't do? It doesn't seem so, for my particular playstyle. Does regen require more effort than these other secondaries to play? Yep, at least for me.