StormDevil

So, over on the Ten Ton Hammer site, there's a recap of the PAX east CoH panel. I haven't seen anything about the relevant info here on the boards. Supposedly, I19 will see Kinetic Melee and Electricity Control, as well as Demons and Pistols. There's also some info about the new "incarnate" (level 50+) system.

Link: http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/p...CoH/incarnates

This may have already been covered somewhere else, but I didn't see it; if it has, feel free to direct me to that thread. If it's not been discussed elsewhere, any chance of a Red Name dropping by and either verifying or denying what was in there?

I've been farming Carnies lately; they seem to give pretty decent drops (90 million in Recipe/Salvage drops in about 3 hours today), are easy to kill (well, at +2/x8 with no Bosses, anyway), and the XP's not awful (but I *am* farming them with a 50, so I couldn't care less).

Hell, the good news is that anyone who still wants to use them in a build can start getting them at vastly discounted prices.

As a slight digression, what are the impending changes to the +Recovery Uniques? Just trying to salvage some builds here.

Hmm...that's odd. My perception is probably skewed by the fact that Psi *seems* more prevalent than Fire, due to the glaring Psi hole that most armors have, which in turn makes Psi that much more dangerous when you do encounter it.

But really, only 2% of the damage type in the game? Huh. I suspect it's more prevalent late-game, which is where I tend to spend most of my play time.

Given those two powerset combos (DM/FA and FM/DA), it's kind of tough to just isolate Resistance. Well, not really, but what I mean is Resistance is just one part of survivability. Defense, Regen, Healing, and, uh, "proactive Defense" (killing people, things, and other nouns).

/DA offers Cloak of Darkness, which, when slotted out, can give you an extra ~5.9% Defense to all (and another 2.5% Defense to Range, for ~8.4%, if you 6-slot it with Red Fortune). Stack that with Weave, throw in a Steadfast and CJ, and you're looking at a base of ~16.5% to all. Not too shabby. And FM is one of your best bets for that Proactive Defense portion.

DM/FA gives you no extra defense, aside from DM's -toHit stuff, but that's pretty negligible against AVs, and still kinda crimped against that Purple stuff (/em Chappelle). You do get two fast acting heals...well, one and a half...but I feel like more defense is better than more heals when it comes to survivability. Also, bear in mind that of the defensive sets' strongest Resist categories--Fire for FA and Psi for DA--Psi is far more prevalent than Fire, and only one of the sets (DA) provides Resistance to both.

You could also try posting in the Costume (Re)-Design thread; it's stickied up at the top of the list here.

I've also only got experience with Kat/Dark, but the basic differences amongst the sets are:

Fire: most damage (Blazing Aura, Burn, Fiery Embrace), good heal, End recovery tool
Elec: good damage from aura, ok heal, best End recovery/discount tools, built in +Recharge
Dark: good damage from aura, strongest (situational) heal, built in Defense, built in Stealth,
2 extra "mitigation auras", can be End heavy*

The one thing they all have in common is a lack of KB protection (except for Elec's Grounded, which is often skipped), so you'd have to dip into IOs or Acro to fix that.

*slightly overrated, can be overcome with good slotting and intelligent play

You might also want to bear in mind that Power Customization is, supposedly, going to extend to APPs and Epics at some point. It'd be a shame to invest in a ton of IOs that you might not need later down the road.

I once rerolled a level 50 character into the exact same character, just because I decided I wanted him to be taller. Then we got the Super Science Booster. I was bummed.

Hey Virtue.

So, I poked around the SG thread, nothing jumped out at me. I went over to Virtueverse and checked the Recruiting SGs there, no dice. As annoying as this post probably is, it's more or less a last resort.

I've got a character, Doctor Blood, for whom I'd like to find an SG home. He's a "Victorian-era vigilante", a Magic origin Katana/Dark Armor Scrapper in game terms. Influences in his look, personality, etc. include Jack the Ripper, DC's Shade ("the Shade", not, "Shade, the Changing Man"), Marvel's Doctor Nemesis, and even a little Sephiroth.

Ideally, I'd like to find a group similar to the Midnight Squad; a loose collection of varied persons and personalities who share common interests, but not necessarily common goals or motivations. If anyone knows, or is a member, of such a group, please give me a shout; I'd be much obliged.

Alternatively, if such a group doesn't seem to exist, but a decent amount of people would like one to, we could go that direction.

Thanks!

EDIT: as another alternative (and one I find kind of appealing), a "Midnight Squad" Global Channel. This would provide the benefit of allowing existing characters to remain in their current SGs while still being able to contact and interact with other Midnighters.

Another vote for Mind/TA here, insofar as "fun but rare" powerset combos go. One thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is that TA's Tier 1 (Entangling) is one of the best parts about this pairing. Illusion and Mind are the only Controller primaries that don't come with any sort of Immobilization, and Immobs are generally very effective against AVs/EBs.

The other nice thing about Entangling is that you get to set up Containment without "wasting" one of your ST Attacks/Controls. Entangling>Dominate>Lift>Mesmerize is a pretty potent ST Attack chain available as early as level 4.

That post is still there, and as many of the subsequent posts in the thread point out, the builds are, uh..."relatively inefficient".

Can't you get the same result by logging in and typing [Dual Pistols Power]?

(not trying to be snarky, just sayin')

People who buy common IO recipes for 400k absolutely and completely fail at reading the Crafting Table menu.

The build you posted will cost you, at least, One Billion Influence (barring drops/AE tickets/Merit rolls).

Each LotG 7.5 Recharge IO will run you about 150M Inf, minimum.

The Numina's, Miracle, and Regenerative Tissue Uniques will run about 300M Inf combined.

This is not to dissuade you from your planned final build in any way, it's just to alert you that in no way, shape, or form is that anything less than an expensive build. It's for reasons like these that I use "finished my build" as the new "made it to 50".

I agree with all of that, but there's still a disconnect between transferring those abilities from the comic world to the game world when you're fighting NPCs. A Superman type (Inv/SS/Energy Tanker) should be able to easily solo AVs, but in CoH terms, he can't.

Anywho, that's all fairly academic; in the CoH world, player-characters can't really match the feats of guys like Supes, because they're more along the lines of Incarnate-types. Player-characters are more like the "second tier" of heroes (although it's kind of funny when you solo Tyrant and rescue the universe's most powerful hero).

The larger point is that I don't think there's really a valid reason that super strength and martial prowess should be mutually exclusive.

I dunno about the comic book comparison. Yeah, when you think of comic book Scrappers, Batman, Wolverine, Daredevil, Captain America, guys like that are the first who come to mind. But that seems like a kind of narrow view of hand to hand combat type guys; Superman and the Hulk are your "archetypal" Tankers, but it seems kind of silly that in CoH terms, Bats, Logan, Murdock, and Cap could all outdamage Kent and Ed Norton (cue Johnny_Butane).

I do agree that the issue with Rage isn't the buff, but the duration; heck, it's already kind of silly that SS/SD Brutes can run around with what essentially amount to 3 different permanent damage buffs. If you dropped the recharge, though, effectively ending the ability to stack Rage, then I think the Defense crash would have to get looked at again. Or, alternatively, it could be regarded as an "offensive Unstoppable", so that you're trading off 2 minutes of hellacious damage for a window of vulnerability.

I think some of your problem with Thunderclap does indeed stem from only investing 3 slots in it, unless you've got a lot of Accuracy in those slots. Using it on Quicksand-ed mobs should mitigate some of that concern, though.

By itself, Thunderclap is less than impressive, but on an Earth/Storm, it's a key ingredient to being able to effectively lock down entire spawns (probably every other spawn, given Stalagmites' recharge).

I went with Force mastery for my Epic, for two reasons: Personal Force Field and Force of Nature. PFF lets you (for the most part) gather up a bunch of mobs to saturate Drain Psyche before you nuke, and if you slot DP for End Mod, hitting 7 or 8 of them gets you back up and running almost instantly. Much harder to do on teams, but on teams you'll probably have the luxury of popping a blue and not worrying about immediate incoming damage.

You can do the same routine with Force of Nature; both its crash and Recovery debuffs are numerically identical to Inferno, so you can avoid those, as well. And it's kind of hilarious to have a Ranged Defense capped, S/L Resist capped AoE monster who also has about 45% Resistance to everything but Psi (granted, only about 1/3 of the time, but it's still fun).

Oh, that changes things considerably. The unique pieces (Miracle and Numina) and the LotGs alone push this build up over the half billion Inf mark. My personal method for generating Inf is really weird*, so you definitely want to listen to someone else, there. I don't do market PvP, simply because just selling things at Wentworths tends to log me out about 4/5 of the time I try it. There's some great info on "getting rich quick" over in the market forum.

*I'll include it for giggles; once I get to a decent level of survivability/speed on a character, I'll start doing Oro flashback arcs for merits. It's time consuming as all get out, but you earn experience, Inf, drops, and merits, so it's not a total waste of time.

3 slotting BotZ's in 2 travel powers gets you an extra 6.26% AoE defense, so there's that. HamiOs in Active Defense increase both the recharge speed and the Defense Debuff Resistance of that power; but you might want to hold off on that on a new build. Word is that's going to get "fixed" soon(tm).

I agree with Claws, you could probably swap out one or two of the End Mod pieces in PP for a Health IO or two.

The Gaussain set's primary benefit is 6-slotting it to get the +2.5 Def to all; if you don't go that route, all the other pieces kind of fall apart (yeah, there are some other bonuses in there, but I think it's a net loss). Again, if it were me--and it ain't, so feel free to disregard--I'd just leave Build Up with two Rech IOs (no real need for the +toHit to be enhanced in there), and use at least one of the free slots for the Kismet +toHit; that's a really key IO. ToHit works differently than Accuracy, so while an extra 6% doesn't look like much, it's actually fairly substantial.

Another fun IO piece for this build is the Force Feedback +Recharge proc; Thunderstrike is a great place for this, even though I hate hate hate the tiny (7 whole feet) radius of Thunderstrike. If you're running at /x6 or higher, you should be able to get that thing to fire off at least every other spawn, and it's a pretty big boost; anything that lets you get Lightning Rod and Shield Charge up faster is a Good Thing.

Just some minor tweaks, which again, you can absolutely feel free to reject; except for those few small things, it looks pretty similar to what I've got in Mids.

It also looks to be kind of a pricey build; all those LotG 7.5s, particularly, push this build into "wow, this is expensive" territory. But if you're flush with Inf/Merits/Tickets, you're golden.