Tonality

Stone is very single-target heavy, which is not necessarily the ideal option for farming. So between stone and electric, I would go elec/shield. You'll find the combination of lightning rod+shield charge incredibly enjoyable.

However, with that said, elec/sd comes in second to Super Strength/Shield, providing you have around 600 million inf (or more) to round out the character and begin addressing the endurance issues.

Farming is not about survivability. If it were, stone armor would be the top choice for farming. It isn't. It's about kill speed. Therefore, as long as you can avoid death, whichever set can kill the fastest is considered the best farmer. Hence SS/SD. You get rage, against all odds, and fury all working in concert for some incredible +damage. You also get the reliable mitigation of footstomp, which also puts out more AoE damage than Lightning Rod over time.

It was difficult to read your post because of your stream-of-consciousness approach. Paragraphs and whatnot would help me and others read and understand what you want quicker. I'd definitely appreciate it!

I have herostats recordings showing damage auras actually deal more damage than patron AoE attacks. Over a 10 minute period, I had lightning field deal 40k damage. That's 66 DPS by itself. That's hardly nothing.

I do not have a demorecord of a shielder, but if I assume it deals 10x300 damage on a brute (hitting 10 targets at one time because you rarely hit 16), and then proceed to calculate the amount, I get 60,000, which isn't that much greater than what I got in game from a damage aura. That's also assuming a player has gotten the 90 second recharge down to 30 seconds, which is only possible with IOs.

Not only that, but the blazing aura is a toggle, which means at the same time that it is dealing damage, I'm using my other powers to attack, supplementing my attacks.

I find I must disagree with your opinion

1) Apocalypse is a nice set to have. If you don't wish to spend that much to get that set, consider decimation, which offers 6.25% recharge.

2) If you want to squeeze in more recharge, try 5 slotting maneuvers with red fortune for 5% recharge and adding a 6th slot with LoTG 7.5. You lose some recovery bonuses, but gain some recharge. For 6 slots, I believe that combination is the best recharge you can get of any power.

3) I see ragnarok. Posi could go here, but ragnarok is a decent set, and I don't think is quite as expensive as apocalypse, though I can be mistaken.

4) Adjusted Targetting offers 5% recharge at 5 sets. It's an option for Tactics. Though with your kismet and some decent slotting, I don't think you'll have an issue hitting if you skipped tactics completely and saved yourself some end (though it's nice for teams)

5) If you can fit another slot into dark blast, I'd seriously suggest decimation here as well.

I would think that at level 29 there are a lot of other powers that could be quite helpful to a blaster instead.

I agree with Adeon. You often see that on end-game builds for better survivability when everything in place.

Try to reduce the quantity of your spawns by a significant amount. See if that solves it. You can then incrementally increase it (or actually check the map to see what the maximum allowable is)

I know certain maps have been modified to reduce their maximum farmability. I don't use city02, so I don't know if it was affected, but it was a popular farm map.

I haven't have that much luck, and I was using the Snake Temple. Actually, in my latest three runs, I managed to earn a purple and 0 pool C's.

So yeah, I'm not intereseted in killing bosses right now.

To the OP (sorry for interrupting the fun)

A lot of it has to do with networking. I've been a little asocial in game as of late (like the past 6 months), so my global list has diminished. The key to finding the server lively (and what I haven't done) is join an active SG or VG, and aggressively seek to make friends. As a brute, that means you're threatening to Knockout Blow them if they don't add you to their Global.

With all of that said, the devs have offered an opportunity to see the world of CoH and all the various communities. Each one certainly will have advantages and disadvantages to it. While I'll keep infinity as my home, I am branching out to others to explore.

Here's what I'm seeing in your build:

1) Twilight grasp is slotted way past the ED cap for healing. You'll be a lot happier adding a little end/rech to that to round it out.
2) With the same point in mind, a lot of your attacks are focusing a lot on accuracy and damage with no regard to recharge or endurance. For example, switching out the two-aspect thunderstrike IO's for triple aspects will make a BIG difference. I don't see a significant cost in doing this either.
3) Dark servant can take accurate hit debuff IOs. Consider that nice dmg proc you can put in it. Your pet also has no accuracy or mez duration (consider the hamidons for this) with it, which is primarily what this pet does.
4) Dark Embrace is woefully underslotted.
5) Petrifying gaze is AWESOME. Please try it before you don't include it in your build.
6) Tar patch needs a LOT more recharge. It's one of the best powers in the set, and I want this up as much as possible on my /darks.
7) Irradiate is a great power if you don't mind getting up and close.

Dude. Chill.

For a moment, I thought maybe I had somehow triggered this outburst with my topic here, where I was trying to decide between a rad/fire and a rad/mm blaster. Then I did a search for your recent posts, and I start seeing a pattern.

Well, I went with Rad/Fire for now. While I am wishing I had a drain psyche and a crashless nuke, I'm actually surprised at how well it performs even without any IOs in the 20's. The AoE potential is incredibly useful on teams, and on a decent team, you'll be solid. A few mezzes from some ruin mages got me killed a few times, but even then, I was able to be surprisingly effective.

Also, since I'm pre-IO's and pre-combustion, I really am not having serious end problems yet, though that's due in part to slower recharge times and stamina being so helpful at my level. It seems to me that this particular combo could be fairly handy on a posi.

Why doesn't energize have doctored wounds 5/slotted for heal/rech and 5% rech bonus? If you still want to cap your healing, you can still keep the 6th slot. It's not like doctored wounds is expensive to get either. (yes, I'm basically campaigning to make this the standard slotting for energize)

To answer your question about SS/ single target damage, I would say my answer would be "I wouldn't". It just doesn't have a smooth single target chain. However, if you want to up your single target damage, pick up gloom over Mu Lightning. You'll find the damage higher (212.4 vs. 159.3 slotted on your build at 0% fury), and a 0.07 second faster casting time. It is a DoT attack, but when soloing a pylon, that doesn't matter at all.

Also if you want more HP and won't use footstomp that often, take a look at the eradication set. The 4th bonus is an additional 2.25% HP, which is quite a bit. You could then drop the FF proc (I know, blasphemy) and 2 slot in a scirr for the 10% regen back. Or, just move that extra slot from energize over to health and get the regenerative tissue +regen unique for 30% more regen. Or both.

Arctic air is what consumes the most endurance, due to the slotting.

There are some things you can do without losing your softcap to help with endurance:

- Instead of Cytoskeleton Hamis in your defenses, use Enzymes. It is a bug that you can use a defense-debuffing Hami to buff your defenses, but the 33% modifier allows you to replace the LOTG Def IO with a Def/End IO, saving a few tenths of endurance. This process also frees up a slot in Arctic Fog and Hover.
- For a loss of 1.1% defense in your shield buffs, you can pick up Gift of the Ancients in your two powers for a gain of 0.04% recovery.
- With those two free slots, you could 6-slot arctic fog instead with red fortune, gaining 2.5% range defense. Unfortunately, for the life of me, I cannot make up that lost 2.5% range defense. I see you can free up another slot in fly by removing the BoTZ KB protection IO. But, no matter where I put it, I can't get another 2.5 ranged defense. The only possibility would be to remove that slot, and two additional others (maybe the achilles in Sleet) and one out of shiver. Then you could reslot arctic air, and even cram 3 procs in it as well as gain 7.5% recovery from it, and get 80.24% confuse and end redux by pairing the proc with the confuse/end from the set.

That's about the only way to squeeze any more endurance from that. The end result is a net gain of 1.9 end/second, but at a loss of 15% recharge and 15% global acc.

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

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Queen Mab: Level 50 Magic Controller
Primary Power Set: Ice Control
Secondary Power Set: Cold Domination
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Ice Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Block of Ice -- Lock-%Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(5), Lock-Rchg/Hold(11), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(13), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(17), Lock-Acc/Hold(37)
Level 1: Infrigidate -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Frostbite -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(A), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(3), Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(3), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(31), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(34), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(37)
Level 4: Ice Shield -- GftotA-Def(A), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(5)
Level 6: Arctic Air -- CoPers-Conf/EndRdx(A), CoPers-Conf%(7), Mlais-Dam%(7), Mlais-EndRdx/Conf(9), C'phny-EndRdx/Conf(9), C'phny-Dam%(15)
Level 8: Shiver -- TmpRdns-Acc/EndRdx(A), P'ngTtl-Acc/EndRdx(15)
Level 10: Glacial Shield -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(11)
Level 12: Ice Slick -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(13)
Level 14: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 16: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(17)
Level 18: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(19), Zephyr-ResKB(19), LkGmblr-Rchg+(21)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(42), P'Shift-EndMod(42)
Level 22: Arctic Fog -- RedFtn-EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def(23), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(23), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(25), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(31), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(43)
Level 24: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(25)
Level 26: Maneuvers -- RedFtn-EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def(27), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(31), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(43), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(46)
Level 28: Benumb -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(29), RechRdx-I(29), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 30: Boxing -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(40), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(40), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48)
Level 32: Jack Frost -- BldM'dt-Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Acc(33), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(33), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(33), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(34), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34)
Level 35: Sleet -- Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Ragnrk-Dmg(36), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(36), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(37)
Level 38: Heat Loss -- P'ngTtl-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(A), TmpRdns-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(39), P'Shift-EndMod(39), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(39), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Tough -- HO:Ribo(A), HO:Ribo(42), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(43)
Level 44: Ice Blast -- Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), Thundr-Acc/Dmg(45), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(45), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(46), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46)
Level 47: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(48), HO:Enzym(48)
Level 49: Frozen Armor -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(50), HO:Enzym(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment

Great idea. I don't see any reason why rest isn't more of a toggle anyway.

You compared the recharge of Consume with Power Sink, but you forgot to compare the recharge of energize and healing flames. Not only that but it costs 13 endurance to fire power sink. I think consume costs 0.63 endurance.

As for shield charge, you're looking at it from the standpoint of IO's. On a character using SO's you might have it fire once every 45 seconds without hasten, but you're then sacrificing potential accuracy/end/damage. In that 45 seconds, your dmg aura has fired 22 times. You deal around 20+ damage a tick on a brute running 80% fury. I don't see a vast difference between those numbers.

The difference is that SC is a front-loaded damage capable of benefiting from recharge bonuses to reduce the recharge to a point where there is a noticeable advantage on shield.

IO sets do not offer much in the way of resistance bonuses. They do offer decent defense bonuses, which players on defensive sets use to hit the softcap (and therefore only get hit 5% of the time).

A resistance based set can stack a certain aspect of defense on top of a build in order to increase survivability. This is typically either melee defense or Smashing/Lethal. They use these IOs: (remembering off-hand so my numbers/names might be slightly off)

S/L Defense Sets:
-Kinetic Combat (Single Melee) - 3.75% at 4 slots
-Enfeebled Operation (Immob) - 2.5% at 4 slots (another 1.25 if you want it for the 6)
-Mocking Beratement (Taunt) - 2.5% at 4 slots
-Perfect Zinger (Taunt) - 3.13% at 6 slots
-Reactive Armor - 1.88% at 4 slots.

Melee Defense Sets:
-Touch of Death (Single Melee) - 3.75% at 6 slots
-Obliteration (PBAoE) - 3.75% at 6 slots
-Multistrike (PBAoE) - 1.88% at 6 slots
-Titanium Coating (resistance) - 2.5% at 6 slots

General sets for defense:
-Gaussian's - 2.5 to all positions and 1.25 to all types at 6 slots
-Steadfast Protection Res/Def Unique IO - 3% defense to all
-Gladiator's Armor Def/TP Resist - 3% def to all (but will probably cost you around 4 billion [with a B])

Also Melee and S/L defense sets listed are interchangable. They offer half the bonus to the other category. So, a 3.75% S/L bonus would also have included a 1.88% Melee bonus, but I listed which category they offered the best bonus in.

As for handling an AV, Castle was able to solo an AV on an invuln with a simple SO build. He was able to do this by intentionally glitching the AV to stick to ranged attacks in melee range to reduce the incoming damage. In other words, it's possible you can solo an AV on that build, but you will struggle a lot less using other sets. There will also likely be many AV's you will encounter on that build that you cannot solo.

This is because of how long AV fights last solo. The biggest concern once you've made sure you can live through the damage the AV puts out becomes actually having enough recovery to last the 10-20 minute fight.

Optimal AV Soloing builds have these characteristics:
-An effective single-target chain with no net loss of endurance (so enough recovery to support a sustained chain)
-A method of restoring health when you get hit by the AV. This can be an innate heal, or Aid Self (in the case of a claws/SR brute).
-45% defense against the AV's damage to reduce the chance of hitting you as much as is possible.

SS/FA is not the ideal set for AV soloing. DM/SD or DM/SR would be the ideal set. This has to do with SS not matching DM's attack chain sustained DPS and FA not being softcapped to damage, so your heal, even though it will be up every 10 seconds or so, will not be enough to mitigate the extreme amount of damage.

Now, you could potentially build a SS/FA with around 30% S/L def and not gimp yourself. Stacking that will reduce the incoming damage by 60%, and is probably enough to get you to survive the encounter. Then the problem becomes endurance. While you have consume, expect it up around every 60-80 seconds. On a SS build, you will potentially burn through your end faster than that, if rage crashes during that time.

I find with most brutes, focusing on AV soloing intentionally gimps one of the most enjoyable aspects of playing a brute - widespread carnage. A SS/FA brute will cause a LOT of carnage, but you'll want a few things:

1) KB IO's or Acrobatics to deal with the lack of KB protection
2) Combat Jumping to offer immob protection. Burn isn't preventative protection.
3) Inspiration use or layered S/L or Melee defense to increase survivability.
4) Focus on recharge to get the heal firing frequently.

Also, it is important to note that FA does have very poor energy resistances, and will struggle against rikti. It doesn't mean you shouldn't play a SS/FA because of this, but that you need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

Out of curiousity I googled up one of those sellers. The first one that came up listed a billion for around 20. That puts it at 7.4k USD. I suppose I was a little too hard on our market.