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Oh, right, the Conquerers. It would help if I remember what actually goes on in these spawns. I beat them up first, and when they hit their power, I switch to one of the other bosses. When it expires, I return to the Conquerer(s).

Yep, though for most content, I'll also agree with PrincessDarkstar that "if you cannot build enough defence into your character you are probably better off taking a defence set, because although layering is good, 2 small layers is not as good as one great layer (And capped defence is the key layer)."

Soft capped defenses ARE amazing. In and of themselves, they'll make you pretty survivable. If that's all you can do, it's a good thing to do. But you're not going to be an unkillable monster if that's your only trick for staying alive. You also want resistance/hit points and some sort of healing/regeneration. And in incarante content in particular, you may want some other tricks as well. They'll kill you by destroying your defense. They'll kill you by destroying your endurance. They'll kill you if you don't get out of that nasty power right now.

And in some cases, you might not even bother with the soft cap. My Katana/Dark Scrapper has maybe 38% ranged and AoE defense. In incarnate content, there's not such a stark difference between 38% and 45%, since you really want 59%+, plus I spend so much time with my defense debuffed badly. So I swapped some defense (used to be soft cap) for a little more resistance and a lot more recharge to get Dark Regeneration back faster. I'm happy with the change, even if I'm still not as solid as I'd like due to the aformentioned defense debuffs, which can frequently spike to 100% when I'm soloing.

For me, it's personality. I don't like playing with random strangers. I do play with people I know personally (real world, not forum), but only a few of those play CoH. It probably breaks down to about 65% solo, 30% duo, 4% team of 3 or 4, 1% larger.

I also hate playing with NPCs, though, and even with my own pets (like the Lore pets). So it's not entirely about people.

Further confusing things, I used to do the old Hami raids all the time, and enjoyed them.

I'm not sure if anything can be done in the game to encourage me to team. What I know I HATE is when they encourage teaming by REQUIRING it to get some specific reward. That doesn't bring me into the fold. That makes me see red. But I also don't think there's any need for the game to encourage me to team. So what if I mostly solo and duo and enjoy the game that way? That's not a game failure. I'm paying and playing.

Yeah, I totally understand. I'm an attack chain minimalist, which also equates to boring. It does FEEL week playing it both due to lack of knockdown and lack of DPS. Sure, it gets the job done (except that it didn't), which is most of what I care about, but it gets the job done in kind of the lamest, most boring way possible. I'm OK with that, but I understand exactly why you and perhaps most people would hate it.

And there's little reason for it. Set bonuses and such are almost as good with the regular attacks. If I can come up with a good chain with just Golden Dragonfly, I might do that. Otherwise, I'll probably go back to my old standby of DA GC GD GC DA GC SD GC. It's a bit iffier when stacking Divine Avalanche, but it allows for a lot more variety. Want to shorten it under 10 seconds to keep the double stack? DA GC GD DA GC SD. Need more Damage? DA GC GD GC SD GC. Need lots of damage? Well, I probably won't have the recharge on Katana/Dark, but GC GD GC SD.

And I'm leveling up as a Brute right now. It'll take a while, but the equivalent on a Brute build wouldn't have nearly as much running.

And I'm thinking Water Spout (Edit: Well, for Scrapper. Not sure what to do with Brute since that's not an option.), even if Energy Torrent would require fewer build changes. I'm thinking 45 degrees just won't be enough, particularly when I get nailed down in ice patches. Water Spout's chaos would probably make things a bit more interesting.

It does, and I went ahead this morning and spent the merits to get myself tier 3 again. And as long as it is malfunctioning and staying on, it actually works quite well to prevent running. But when it works as I believe is intended and shuts off for two minutes out of every four, that's two minutes out of every four of running, and I pretty much immediately regretted blowing the merits. It's almost more annoying than just full time running, because I also curse about how the toggle dropped, and how I don't like the devs addiction to powers that aren't just on or off, and why would they come up with an entirely new mechanic instead of just making it a click power if that's how it was going to behave. On top of all that, I really think the better Hybrid "toggle" for me, if runners weren't an issue, is Melee Core. A Brute makes the runners a solved issue (I hope), allowing for Melee Core. On top of that, Melee Core caps my resistance to several damage types before even entering battle, so would be just that much better on a Brute where the caps are higher.

Of course by the time I have a Brute to 50 and incarnated, the game will have moved on, and it's possible the Scrapper will be better again. I guess it gives me options, though. And I enjoy leveling, not just end game play. We'll see how it goes. I might decide I'm just being reactionary.

Eh, I'm not much for teaming or asking for/accepting help.

But I may have hit my lifetime limit for running enemies this morning. Alexei is now a level 8 Brute, and until/unless they change the AI, I don't think I'll be playing anything without a taunt aura. I may just be getting more and more sensitive, or it's getting worse issue after issue, but either way the excessive running is driving me insane and making the game not fun to play.

It'll take a while, certainly. But I like playing the character, so eventually I'll get there. I could actually purchase the tier 3 right now, and might do so, as that would make playing the character more fun, since I hate runners. I'll probably do that, and then just play. Eventually everything else will come my way.

I was playing around with tier 3 Melee Partial Core and Melee Partial Radial, and I definitely want my Melee Partial Radial back for normal play, because I really hate runners. I just felt that Core offered a lot more for pure survivability when seriously debuffed, so that's where I went with my tier 4. And yeah, Brute is then the best of both worlds, taunt and Core, with other survivability benefits as well. I'm not sure I'll make the switch, though, because at my rate it would be a year before the Brute was all kitted out, and by then, maybe the Scrapper would be a better overall package.

Cloak of Fear appears to be mag 2 in Mids' for both Scrappers and Brutes.

Well, I did actually turn off AVs for Diabolique and Tub Ci. I did try both as AVs first.

Diabolique was chain knocking me back through 14 points of protection, so she has more than that. I could basically keep her almost but not quite steady on hit points. If I used pets, they could do some damage to her, and with them, I was able to get her down to her bubbling phase. But even with pets, I couldn't kill her while they were up, and then she'd gain back while they were gone to where I just couldn't take her down. I tried several pet cycles and then gave up.

Survivability was no problem with her. I'm pretty sure I could have walked away from the keyboard and made a sandwich. Never used my heal. Never used Barrier. Never went below about 2/3 hit points.

As for Tub Ci, I should try him again. But I got to him, and I think one of the, uh, Ancestor Spirits (?) he has with him just ran off never to be seen again, because I couldn't even do 1 hp of damage. I searched around, but never found it, and ended up starting over with him set to EB in frustration. Honestly, without pets, I probably didn't have the DPS to put him down once he was four levels over me.

Again, no problem surviving, but that was with him one level over me, so who knows, maybe he'd have gotten nasty.

Yeah, Death Shroud IS one of them, I just didn't figure it was contributing anything to my survivability or lack thereof, so didn't think it was what you were talking about. I guess the misses could have been either, as I was running both, at least until halfway through when I brain farted and turned off Cloak of fear.

Cool.

OK, so to sum up where I think we are, from fairly easy to fairly hard:

• Oppressive Gloom instead of Vengeance
• Bring Golden Dragonfly back
• Leviathan Mastery (Water Spout, maybe Hibernate, maybe the hold) instead of Body Mastery
• Ageless instead of Barrier
• Brute instead of Scrapper (*grumble*)

Edit: And...

• Improve target prioritization
• Try to stay more in the middle of the spawn where target prioritization allows
• Don't turn off Cloak of Fear like a spastic newb

And I need to give more thought to how some or all of these changes would affect my performance on other groups of enemies.

Thanks, y'all.

I assume you mean my Cloak of Fear misses a lot? I have no idea how it missed those little crawly things when they ran in to attack. But there's a user error at 7:29. I'm getting nailed with drains or recovery debuffs or something, so I click on Conserve Power. Then, believing that won't be enough, I click off Cloak of Fear. I can't remember any thought from the time other than "fix endurance". I may have been reaching for Death Shroud (right next to it) and missed. I may have done it as a bad habit from easy groups where I want damage more than mitigation. In any case, it would have been better to click off Death Shroud, Assault, maybe Tactics, anything but mitigation.

I also should have jumped in the middle instead of working my way in from the side. I normally do. I guess since there was a target right on the edge on my side, I just ran in straight instead of hopping into the middle behind him. Maybe I was worried I'd have trouble hitting him from some other angle, and just wanted that Elder of Sorrow down fast.

And yeah, there's almost nothing in range of Melee Core Hybrid or Cloak of Fear the whole fight (/em Scrapper Crai). I really think I'd be better as a Brute. Higher resistance caps actually matter with Melee Core (and Barrier if I kept it), more hit points would help some, and I'd finally have that taunt aura I wish I had. In casual play, I can use use Melee Radial (once I build it again), but Melee Core just seems so much better for pure survivability when facing defense debuffers, particularly if I had higher caps.

Ah, sorry, I assumed incorrectly that LD was a typo in the GC-LD-GC-GD chain, as Soaring Dragon would have made it the standard DPS chain. I would have to substitute Divine Avalanche for Gambler's Cut since I'm not Super Reflexes. The result would have reasonably-acceptable DPS, a double stack of Divine Avalanche faster than 10 seconds for breathing room, and an achievable level of recharge with a small gap outside of Hasten. I do worry about its performance under the stress of recharge debuffs, and I run into plenty of those as well. But I guess the main point you're making is "more AoE and knockdown"? I should poke around at low-recharge or flexible-recharge chains that would let me use Golden Dragonfly. It's not much trouble fitting another attack into the build - just move some things around and suffer a minor hit on a couple set bonuses.