Papaschtroumpf

ok thanks. I completely misunderstood something about multiple builds: I thought you needed to *play* through to 50 again.
I tried it on my Peacebringer (to make a human only build) and realize it *is* like a respec, without saving the enhancements

as a purist, is light form Human Only?

I know, too good to pass up

the paragon wiki explains how it works, I was more tyring to figure out if it's "worth it"

can you run the respec trial on the 2nd build?

that's a going rogue feature right?

So just rejoined after leaving the game just as issue 13 was coming out, so I haven't experienced dual builds.

I was trying to understand the pros and cons

pros:
- frees up using a another character slot if you wanted to play different flavor of a build
- great for epic archetypes (such as triform/human only PB)
- uses less slots per SG
- lets your friends find you by name rather than lean two character names
- faster than switching characters

cons:
- character gets only one respec per new issue (do you get to run the respec trial for your second build?)


Am I missing something (other than the it's be grat if you could share enhancements between your two builds, that would make it truly worth it)

is there a way to exchange items (enh/recipes/salvage/inf) betwen multiple characters taht are not in the same SG? the same server?

trying to consolidate my characters and don;t want to lose the loot...

Hi all, I stopped playing COH/CoV right around the introduction of issue 13 if I remember right.

Can anyone give me a few pointers to what have changed since then? especially in terms of gameplay / character builds that'll allow me to get back in the game? (no need to go all the way back to ED and the market had been introduced around isue 11 I think)

Going Rogue had not been released back then, any reason to get it now?

Is there a good character builder 3rd party program? I remember there used to be a few.

Hello, Justice!

After a couple years away from CoH, I decided to come play again.
Still downloading the game client, so I haven't logged on yet.

Justice used to be my old haunts, I'm sure things have changed quite a bit since issue 13

so while the game downloads, I'll need to check out the forums and see what changed since 2009.

[ QUOTE ]
I need a good human form ranged PB build with regular IO's... can anyone help me?

[/ QUOTE ]

nope. it's the "good" part that's the problem. Human PB ranged attacks suck. If you want to go ranged, go with a build that uses Nova.

Frozen aura info is out of date, it now does decent damage and is probably worth taking. Since this is one of the few /Ice guides, it's worth correcting, since I originally skipped it based on this guide.

[ QUOTE ]
The Peltier Effect (Ice/Fire Tank) - Issue 12

[/ QUOTE ]
that's a great name!

The_Laughing_Man, I finally got around to taking a peek at your build, nice but more expensive than what I'm willing to work for (I have too many toons to feed, and I get bored farming )

One thing I had not realized from your post is that you didn't really go for extra defense (for example completing both sets of Stupefy would give you another 6.3% ranged defense). You instead wnet for recharge and control through faster recharge (you have the equivalent of perma hasten), which is another interesting approach to the build.

I like the idea of the proc in Char, I need to look into that.


Do you still do DA runs? One disadvantage of going with sets rather than stamina is that you may lose some of those set bonuses when you examp. You'll definitely lose that +10% rec from absolute amazement in DA for example.

I hadn't played my fire/storm much since I hit 50, but played her a lot last night helping a friend get to 50.

My final level 50 build is slightly different from what I had posted, but it's pretty close.

I think I will take your advice and drop Rock Armor. It doesn't fit the character concept anyway.

I'm thinking about getting HotFeet again. I sued Hurricane a lot in the 30s, but I now have so many tools that I don't need it as much. My main use for hurricane is to pack foes in a corner or in a tight spot (by runnning around them) before I drop Freezing rain at that spot. it's also my melee "defense".
with Thunder Clap, FlashFire and Fissure however, I can perma-stun everything in a spawn, so I tend to use Hurricane a lot less. With foes perma-stuned and fire-caged imps running nuts, tornado doing it roto-rooter of death routine, adding HotFeet would allow me to kill that extra bit faster.

I got an +recovery drop on another toon, so I'm going to slot that in Health, I had not gotten around to purchase one before, so endurance still requires active management.

By the way, what is the soft cap for defense? I didn;t realize that I was "wasting" it.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One nitpick: the third IO in Stamina hardly does anything. Might as well replace it with a +End proc or else move the slot elsewhere.

[/ QUOTE ]

Every little helps! I know it doesn't make much of a difference, and probably an END reducer in fireblast might be more worthwhile to conserve END and keep things going.


[/ QUOTE ]
Rememebr that some poeple pay a ridiculous amount of money for +4% recovery in the form of IO sets, or even worse, gimp a power to get the recovery bonus.
With lvl50 common IOs:
2 slotted stamina = 83% enhanced or 45.8% recovery or 2.44 end/s
3 slotted stamina = 99% enhanced or 49.8% recovery or 2.5 end/s
4 slotted stamina = 105.44% enhanced or 51.4% recovery or 2.53 end/s

those last two slots in stamina give you +5.6% recovery. From a recovery point of view, unless you slot purples with a +rec bonus, you're getting pretty good bang for your two slots compared to most set bonuses. And it's always on and you don;t have to worry about what lvl your set is.

Also realize that the +5.6% is only 0.09 endurance/s
For comparison, with fire blast slotted 1 acc, 3 dmg, 1 rchg with lvl50 common IOs, your endurance usage is (endurance/recharge) 5.2/2.81 = 1.85 end/s
Putting that end redux in the 6th slot of fireblast makes it use 3.65/2.81 = 1.3 end/s
or over 0.5 end/s difference

if you were in the business of spamming fireblast non-stop, the choice is clear that the best use of that slot is to reduce the end cost of the blast.

But you don;t spam fire blast all day, you don't slot common IOs (right?), so the answer is more complicated....

Mid's does help you figure out how to min max your build.

with the new additional power trays in i12, macros become a much more viable option, I personally am a poor typist and have problems with both taking my hand off the mouse, or taking it off my WASD keys.

[ QUOTE ]
The Blood Widow is an excellent melee combat archetype. Blood Widows can solo well and are even better on teams. Their damage output is very strong and they have good defenses.

[/ QUOTE ]

I laughed when I saw that, because I read another thread earlier today that said BW damage is weak and their defense poor. (I think it was the "can VEAT solo?" thread)

anyway, I have no personal opinion, my widow is lvl2 until tonight.
I'll be using this info in this guide to make my levelling decisions, thanks for posting.

Herostats tells me what time it is. 'nuf said.

Taking another slower look through the guide.

In the "basics" about controllers section:

Immobilize power are one of the most misunderstood and misused powers in the game. you do a good job for an intro to it. I would have liked to see two more things about Immobs:
- immobilize powers can suppress knockback. this can be very bad if the team relies on KB (typical example is fire cages or stone cages on top of an ice slick). you mention it later in the guide, but not in the generic intor, which is too bad.
- immobilize powers do not necessarily negate repel effect. for example foes immob with fire cages will still be pushed around with a Stormie's Hurricane, whereas I believe Stone cages does suppress repel.


containment occurs whenever a foe is "mezzed", not just from (other) controllers, ice melee's freezing touch from a blaster or tank will also setup containment.


minor nitpicks of course...

I'm picking up my Earth/Rad again (lvl22) and I happened to run accross this guide. Our builds are almost identical, except thawt I was planning on Earth Mastery also, both for concept, and because I agree with a previous poster, fissure has decent damage + disorrient.

Have you tried IOs in your build yet?
I am just starting to work on an IO plan for mine, and it looks like I can make this guy very hard to hit at range, jsut like I did for my Fire/Storm controller. Ranged defense added to the debuffs from Rad should make it very hard to mezz or hurt me.
another reason to go with Ice or Earth Epic: they have defense based armors.

you said you had wished you were dark/dark, why? what in dark blast would have been better than rad blast?

By the way dark/sonic is awesome and I soloed invic from 22 on, so if you want soloability look at that combo

hmmm, I htought I posted an answer already but I don;t see it, so let me try again:

I would agree with everything you say about rain of fire, EXCEPT on an /ice blaster: cast RoF over your ice patch to make sure the mobs take the full effect of the power.
Also Shivers+RoF properly slotted won;t let them run away too fast.

Speaking of Ice Patch:, while it's somewhat situational on teams, it is very useful for soloing as it is your bet damage mitigation power. Case in point: "defeat all tuatha in the sewers" mission, on unyielding: those guys hit hard enough that you will killed if you get hit 3 times. So set your ice patch around a corner, pull a group into it, BU+AoEs, finish the boiss with Blaze, and you can finish this mission without a sweat.

Ice patch is useful on teams to help the tank: let the tank take aggro, run in and set your patch under the tanks feet, then run back out to blast from a distance.

any thoughts on Epics? Power pools?

I'm currently using the medicine pool to recover between fights (usually if I mess up during a fight, I die to fast to heal myself).

I see Fire blasters as kill before you get killed, so I see Hasten as a must. In order to save on power slots, I ended up taking superspeed for the travel power, which I happen to like but is not for everyone. also superspeed + stelth IO in prestige sprint makes me fully invisible.

Interestingly enough, at 30, I don't yet have a power that lets me slot -KB IOs, and it's one of the most common ways I die: foes with KB toss me around without my being able to shoot at them before I'm dead.

I haven't started slotted IOs on mine (I usually start at 32 with llvl35 IOs). I don't know if there is a way to get sufficient ranged defense bonuses to make them interesting (I suspect not), so instead I will likely go with "mixed IOs" to get more than 6 SO's worth out of my IOs.
Since I try to avoid fighting anything lower than +2s, I need more than one SO's worth of accuracy (I'm also currently not planning on taking Aim in this build, although that may change for the extra dmg buff).

My thoughts on Epics:
Fire mastery has char, which you can stack on freezing touch to hold a boss. Bonfire is good damage mitigation
Ice Mastery: Hibernate is awesome. Frozen Armor stacked well f you went for defense bonuses out of IO sets. Snow storm is a bit redundant with Shiver
Power MAstery: , PFF is a get out of jail card when you take on too much aggro, especially if you have the medicine pool. Two toggles can make it end heavy
Electric Mastery: I have never tried it, but it has a hold to stack with Freezing touch
Weapons Mastery: I have never tried it, but it has a hold to stack with Freezing touch

(edited for somehow mixing up the ice and power mastery text)

So, any thoughts on IOs?
I've got a fast leveling MA/WP that is about as much fun to play as scrappers can be (my least favorite hero AT, controllers being my preferred AT)

I'm not quite ready to slot IOs yet, but I'm starting to think about it.

I suppose if you go for bonuses, a lot of it depends on your secondary also.

MA/WP is pretty well balanced, has zero endurance issues (Quick Recovery + Stamina, same as Regen)

Given that fact, I think that I will not pursue set bonuses on this build, I will instead try and get the most out of my slots by mixing sets. My goal is to get the equivalent of 2 Acc, 3 DMG and sufficient recharges to have a smooth attack chain. Acc is important as I solo on invincible and don;t plan on taking Body Mastery (taking weapon for concept)

The nice thing with having secondary effects on the powers is that you can slot from more sets, for example an Acc/Rchg from the stun set.
I'll probably pick up a few +Health bonuses in the process which help with WP's regen.

I wouldn't mind some +movement speed and +recharge

I found the answer, they don;t work every tick, just applied once on power activation, then again after 10s, then again at 20s

how long does the debug last?

how does it work for Tornado?

I totally forgot that both Tornado and Freezing rain take def debuff so I had overlooked Achille's heel

I think I won;t go for it simply because it breaks my 6-slotting to get ranged defense bonus, and it's what my build is all about.

how do the "chance of" work for freezing rain? is the chance applied to each and every tick? if so then it's definitely worth slotting them

My fire/storm was a monster till about lvl15 (sweeping perez: snowsotrm+FF+Firecages+rain+hotfeet, the last guy in the spawn dies a few seconds before you run out of end)

It got a bit frustrating in the 20s and low 30s, in part because I built this one like my other fire controllers, yet hurricane and hot feet are at odds with each other, and also I take a lot of aggro that I can't always contain with hurricane (especially on teams).
I was heading towards a mezzing build, with earth mastery, to recapture the early level carnage, and I may still do that when I get to 50, but in the meantime I tried to go the resistance route (wtih tough and set bonuses) but endurance and mezzes seem like they will still punch through that build.

The reason I had originally dismissed a defense based build was because it is hard to get decent defense for every single damage type, and I wasn't thinking positional defense.
But when you think about it, most mezzes are ranged, and hurricane will keep most baddies out of melee range, so you can get the most benefit by going against positional ranged defense.

I only took Maneuvers out of leadership and chose to go with the medicine pool. While aidself is interruptible, having all that defense reduces the risks of getting interrupted.

The one thing that worry me about this build is that imps may get creamed constantly (with the mezzer build, they get hit a lot less, so they survive better and my DPS goes up a lot I think). this is why I went with Earth mastery, Fissure adds another level of protection for the imps through foe disorrient. I still get good tanged defense, although I now need to 6-slot a numina set which is very expensive. I may have to compromise and use a cheaper set to get AoE defense instead, or only 3-4 slot rock armor and use the slots in other places, such as beefing up aid-self.

I may change my mind about bonfire at 49, generally my buils are complete a that level and I don't rely on that power much. Bonfire is nice in case of emergency, and can add damage...

I also had to give up TP friend for this build, so it's another candidate for lvl50.

Edit: I had forgotten to post my build:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.21
http://www.honourableunited.org.uk/mhd.php

Mech Liberty: Level 50 Magic Controller
Primary Power Set: Fire Control
Secondary Power Set: Storm Summoning
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Stone Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Char -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg:40(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx:40(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg:40(3), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:40(7), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:40(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:40(15)
Level 1: Gale -- Acc-I:40(A)
Level 2: Fire Cages -- TotHntr-Acc/Rchg:40(A), TotHntr-EndRdx/Immob:40(5), TotHntr-Acc/Immob/Rchg:40(5), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx:40(7), TotHntr-Dam%:40(9), TotHntr-Immob/Rng:40(11)
Level 4: Snow Storm -- EndRdx-I:40(A)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- Jump-I:40(A)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump-I:40(A)
Level 10: Steamy Mist -- EndRdx-I:40(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+:30(11), S'fstPrt-ResKB:30(21), DefBuff-I:40(43), DefBuff-I:40(50)
Level 12: Flashfire -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg:40(A), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg:40(13), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx:40(13), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun:40(15), Stpfy-Stun/Rng:40(19), Stpfy-KB%:40(19)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I:40(A)
Level 16: Freezing Rain -- P'ngTtl-Acc/Slow:40(A), P'ngTtl-Dmg/Slow:40(17), P'ngTtl-Acc/EndRdx:40(17), P'ngTtl--Rchg%:40(29), P'ngTtl-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow:40(29), P'ngTtl-Rng/Slow:40(31)
Level 18: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+:40(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I:40(A), EndMod-I:40(21)
Level 22: Hurricane -- EndRdx-I:40(A), ToHitDeb-I:40(23), ToHitDeb-I:40(23)
Level 24: Maneuvers -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx:40(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg:40(25), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg:40(25), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:40(27), RedFtn-Def:40(27), RedFtn-EndRdx:40(31)
Level 26: Aid Other -- Heal-I:40(A)
Level 28: Thunder Clap -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg:40(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun:40(31), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx:40(34), Stpfy-Stun/Rng:40(36), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg:40(37), Stpfy-KB%:40(37)
Level 30: Aid Self -- Mrcl-Heal/Rchg:40(A), Mrcl-Heal:40(46)
Level 32: Fire Imps -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg:40(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx:40(33), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx:40(33), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:40(33), BldM'dt-Dmg:40(34), BldM'dt-Acc:40(34)
Level 35: Tornado -- BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx:40(A), BldM'dt-Dmg:40(36), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:40(36), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg:40(37), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx:40(40), BldM'dt-Acc:40(40)
Level 38: Lightning Storm -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg:40(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx:40(39), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg:40(39), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:40(39), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:40(40), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:40(42)
Level 41: Fissure -- Posi-Acc/Dmg:40(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg:40(42), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:40(42), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx:40(43), Posi-Dam%:40(43)
Level 44: Rock Armor -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx:40(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg:40(45), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg:40(45), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:40(45), RedFtn-EndRdx:40(46), RedFtn-Def:40(46)
Level 47: Earth's Embrace -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx:40(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg:40(48), Numna-Heal/Rchg:40(48), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg:40(48), Numna-Heal:40(50), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+:40(50)
Level 49: Bonfire -- Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg:40(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Clrty-Stlth:40(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx(A)
Level 1: Containment



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