Nihilii

I find your reasoning to be spot on. It seems like you'd enjoy the WP/Fire most so you should probably go with that.

Quills adds a lot to AoE damage, not as much as typical damage auras in secondaries, but still a great boost. That said, the best AoE in Spines (Throw Spines) is a cone, so if you dislike these it's best to avoid Spines.

Could be. My own tracking gave me ~1/3000 (6 purples in 19154 kills, or 1/3192.33), and at the time I saw other people talking about 1/3000 so I never bothered to check further, I've got to admit that wasn't very reliable.

1m/hour is what a soloing emp defender built for teaming should make, running normal missions. There was a topic about that, I'm not just pulling this out of my ***.

A more reasonable number for an average farmer, given current market prices, should be somewhere in the 20-40m range, and a good one should manage 100-200m/hour easily. All it takes is purples, and you should get about one purple (~3000 kills) per hour ; although obviously averages are just that, some days you'll get nothing during hours and some days you'll get 4 purps in 2 hours.

Slotting endmod over +end in PP is shooting yourself in the foot. PP gives +12.5% base, so 3 end mod slots will give you an additional +12%. That's +0.22 EPS with 110 max end. One +end proc is almost as good (~+0.2 EPS) and you save 2 slots.

Another point in favor of a Burn buff is animation time/recharges. Burn animates a lot slower and recharges a lot faster than SC, in the above scenario you'd spend roughly 3-4 times as long using Burn as you would using SC - meaning the Shielder has more time to use other attacks and do more damage.

There's also a much bigger potential for wasted damage with Burn, as its full damage requires targets to stay in the patch for ten seconds. This can just as well translate into reduced mobility for the player - staying in patch so mobs stay there too, rather than repositioning for cones or getting everything in melee range.

(To be fair, SC also wastes damage sometimes due to sheer overkill, but while putting even rough numbers on it would be complicated I'm pretty sure even a fearless Burn would still waste more damage.)

141 was the pre-buff SC damage - can you believe they *buffed* it ? I still can't.

Indeed, it does 200 base for scrappers now.

While your screens are higher quality, I can't help but feel many of them miss the mark, compared to the originals.

Specifics :

- Galaxy City : the original plays on the galaxy theme by showing the sky, the moon, the stars.

- Kings Row : in the original, that close up on the garbage bin and dirty streets highlights well the "ghetto" feel of KR.

- Steel Canyon : as mentioned, skyscrapers.

- Faultline : the original is cleverly made, starting from the rebuilding in the bottom and showing a rebuilt area on top.

Great login screen, though.

Alright. Yeah, I can see what you mean (I think). Some people, especially veteran MMO players, sometimes consider the best combo to be the baseline and everything else to be gimped, and might avoid even trying other sets if they're told Shield is king. I'm stuck in the CoH mentality where everyone is awesome and some are just a little bit more awesome than others, and didn't make the jump to a potential new player's perspective.

More endgame content and shinies ; that is to say, we should be getting a lot already with the Incarnate system, I just want even more of it.

I'd also like to see content with unique and interesting rewards introduced, with mechanics challenging the buff/debuff stack and high defense/DDR kind of play, but I don't think it'd be good for the game.

I haven't found endurance to be more of a problem on SoAs than on any other AT without specific end management powers (in some cases, I find it even easier, i.e. soldiers get pets which are very end efficient).

The lack of DDR does hurt occasionally, but to be honest I find the low HP to be more of a problem - it rarely takes more than one luck to deal with def debuffs, but it can take a hell of a lot of sturdies to not die to burst damage given hard enough mobs. It's still a great, easy soloing AT most of the time, which is nicer than you'd expect seeing how strong the team buffs/debuffs are.

IMHO :

- Kat/ELA for ST DPS (DB/ELA being a close second)

Lightning Reflexes help those primaries attain their super high recharge chains, and Energize (+ CP/PP) keeps you going as these chains are also end heavy. Lightning Field is a great boost especially as it benefits from the two -res procs you're going to be able to slot.

- Spines/ELA for AoE damage.

The usual spines goodness without having to care about end, and double damage auras. The only downside about this combo is stuff tend to run away between the end drains and spines dots, so you better attack fast (to stack slows) or pick ET (to keep stuff on their butt).

- Claws/ELA for a nice mix of both.

Nothing specific to say about this. It's Claws, great ST damage, great AoE damage and great mitigation.


Reasons I didn't pick other primaries (doesn't mean they're bad, but rather than there's not necessarily as much synergy as there is with the above examples):

- Fire

Stuff is going to run away, and you've got nothing to prevent it from happening.

- DM

While Siphon Life is still going to be great, it doesn't make the same difference as it does with secondaries lacking heals. Soul Drain is nice, but in prolonged fights against a single tough target Lightning Field works against it by killing its fodder. Finally, while -tohit as a secondary effect is cool ELA starts without defense, and building for top DPS doesn't leave much room to increase defense.

- BS

For DPS purposes, it's just Katana only slightly weaker.

- MA

It's MA. Sorry.

I'm sure you can take Domi on your Kat/ELA, you certainly have the DPS. She's at 50% res, so theorically, 187+ is all you need.

I had ~202 on my DB/WP and her life went down, although way too slowly - didn't bother to stick for longer than a few minutes, I estimate it would have taken me one hour or so. I think I was just barely above her regen, with 219 (the number you reported in the rikti pylon thread IIRC) it should go much faster, albeit still slow.

Diabolique can be taken down with about 200 DPS, although this is highly dependant of your unsuppressed movement, your defense (by which I mean, does she hit with Siphon Speed and Siphon Power or not) and the environment (I find her easier to manage in the graveyard mission, it's outdoors so you can always keep up with her without bumping into corners like in that oranbega cave).

I tend to agree with Catwhoorg. Even 100B (in combined assets) isn't that much nowadays, as putting together a maxed out, BUY IT NOW build on vill side might cost up to 15-20 billions.

(Keywords bolded before someone jump in with "oh well my super duper vill build cost me 300m".)

MA > Badges = PVP (= 0)

IMHO, S/L alone is better than F/C/E/N, even on an inv, due to the overwhelming number of S/L attacks and most defense debuffs being S/L.

Most cold attacks have a smash component so roll against S/L def as well, the same is true for fire melee attacks and some ranged powers (fireball).

Most alts I've created in 2010 were under the assumption this would happen. It makes a big difference for brutes, at least for me - access to conserve power will make lots of endurance heavy builds much more fun to play solo.

FFG will do a lot more for you than TB. On top of defense (which, by itself, is enough to be better than TB in my opinion), it's also status protection. I think you should pick it first.

I'd say you're both right (or wrong, all a matter of perspective)

A small part of the PvP playerbase were hardcores, leveled tons of characters (so could run semi-optimized teams), and PvP itself involves coordination, which also helps in PvE. That said, I've frequently seen people considered skilled PvPers who would not even dare to run a RSF outside of their mind dom and/or stone brute and/or buffdebuff stack, much like they would throw a fit at people using the environment in zone PvP and argue for controlled fights in arena.

In older MMO games, PVP centered ones, people like that used to be called scrubs or carebears (probably still would be). As this MMO is much more casual and easy, here they can be the "elite" PVPers, but complaining as soon as you're pushed outside of your comfort zone is still the exact opposite of skillful play, no matter what's the current perception.

In that small part of the PvP playerbase, you then have a few individuals who, unlike the above, are really great at the game, are the ones who develop strategies/builds, are capable if not willing of running unorthodox teams and fighting against stacked odds and having success doing all that ; there's no doubt these guys would be amongst the best players, PvP or PvE. These guys are few and far between though, and most others are just mindless followers who copypaste builds and tactics without thinking twice.

Then you've got the rest, the biggest part of the PvP crowd, which is kids shouting "lol I pwn j00" in broadcast and generally being stupid in every aspect. "Elite" PvPers like to claim these guys aren't "real" PvPers, but unfortunately they're very much part of the PvP playerbase, much like any firekinfarmerbob1337 who's spamming PI BC in all caps is part of the PvE playerbase.

So, as crazy as it might sound, I've almost described just any MMO human group : a large horde of nitwits, a smaller amount of dudes who aren't all that great but make up for it by playing a lot, and a tiny amount of folks who are really good. The only people missing in this description (and admittedly, a significant part of any community) being the silent ones, who enjoy the game but don't play all that much nor care enough to get passionate about it, so never get noticed by "hardcore" folks.

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Ontopic : I'm still getting better XP in AE than anywhere else, if you guys suck too much to get great XP in AE without exploits, that's fine, but let's not ruin it for everyone else, thank you very much.