UberGuy

Check the price/A-Merit ratio on the non-proc Kinetic Combat pieces, especially the ones that cost one merit. I haven't looked at them recently and I know they've declined, but for a while they had a pretty nice price ratio. Obliteration Quads might be worth checking, too, but I think their price dropped too far to be competitive.

Other than that, those you listed are your big three. Be sure to check those at both their max and minimum levels, since when buying specific recipes you can choose the level you get it at.

Edit: Oh, check the Blessing of the Zephyr knockback protection IOs, again at both 50 and 10.

If you want a mix of AoE and single-target damage, Fire Melee is probably your best bet. Bear in mind, FM is about damage, damage and more damage. Which is grand if, well, you want to do lots of damage. It doesn't do much to help you, though, other than kill stuff real good.

Electric Melee is more AoE-centric. Some folks don't like how long it can take at beating down a hard target, but it's real good at messing up lots of smaller targets.

Dark Melee is pretty decent at messing up single hard targets, and there's pretty much no attack power that can help keep you alive better than Siphon Life. It also has an AoE +endurance power, which might lighten your build constraints some with IOs. It may not matter if you plan to build for the soft-cap on defense, but Dark Melee's debuffs are also work nicely with defense. Dark is not your top choice for defeating lots of foes at once, however.

Martial Arts is a good contender these days for single-target damage. MA is not very good at AoE damage, with only one AoE. It's got less "swiss army knife" going on than Dark Melee, but IMO it's a nice straight-up DPS set now with a couple of nice tools. Cobra Strike is now a truly excellent power which fairly dramatically changed how the set plays.

SR vs. Shield Defense is a tough call, and again it depends some on your build goals. Tricked out to the gills, SR is probably a ahead of SD on being hard to kill, because of its scaling damage resists and its very high defense debuff resistance. It's also much easier (and so much cheaper) to get SR to the defense softcap. However, Shield Defense has Against All Odds, which can be an exceptionally good bonus to your damage, and Shield Charge, which is certainly a nice attack despite some recent downgrades. One of the most well-rounded damage machines you can make if you trick it out is Fire/Shield. You'll be really very good at both single-target and AoE damage and have really good survivability.

DM/SD is also very good at sustained single-target DPS if it has people around to fuel its two +damage powers (Soul Drain and Against All Odds), but again, it's more for mowing down AVs and not lots of massed little guys. FM/SD can still cut down AVs and take down baddies too - it just won't be giving itself massive self heals in the process.

Edit: Sorry, I got, ah, a different kind of Scrapper-lock there. The above is focused primarily on Scrappers. Fury means the +damage powers of both DM and SD benefit Brutes a bit less. Shield Charge is more likely to bump into its damage cap on a Brute, especially if you have fury and use Build Up. Fury affects the DoT portion of Fire Melee attacks, but the presence of the DoT isn't counted in Scrapper criticals, so FM favors Brutes. But most importantly, Brutes get powersets that Scrappers currently don't, like Stone Melee and Super Strength. I also completely forgot to mention Kinetic Melee, which both ATs get (and I haven't gotten past level 4 ). I have lots of experience with Stone Melee and a bit with SS, but let's see if someone else will cover those.

Do you have any constraints? Like, for example, are you not into expensive IO builds? It can affect your choice some. How about what you plan to do with it? Lots of solo? Want to be better at hard targets, mowing down large spawns, or a mix of both?

As with so many arguments, it depends on how you're defining terms.

For the purposes of this argument, you can define "variability" in power picks two ways. You could define it as:

A) a measure of how much difference there is in all powers picked when comparing two builds with the same AT and powersets.

OR

B) a measure of how much difference there is in optional powers picked when comparing any two builds with the same AT and powersets.

Definition (A) means you have to include all the powers we all get, such as Sprint and Rest. If you use this definition, inherent Fitness reduces overall variability in builds, because it increases the total number of powers any two builds will have in common. Even if most people had it to start with, everyone will have it after I19.

Definition (B) means you specifically exclude the powers we all get, because they aren't choices anyway. If you use this definition, inherent Fitness increases overall variability, because it takes three powers most people choose to take and removes them from the list of optional choices. Players will then replace those three powers with other optional choices, which will (probably) not always be the same choices.

BlueRaptor is using definition (A). Everyone arguing with him seems to be using definition (B).

Eh, Voids and Quantums had most of their teeth pulled a long time back. They aren't viewed by everyone as a grand ol' time (some people, like the OP, seem to like them), but they aren't that scary any more.

VEATs have no dedicated enemies. Given the vocal if not majority dislike of Khelds having dedicated enemies (including from teammates who dislike getting random enemies in their missions), I rather doubt we'll see them added for VEATs.

It's the internet! Of course not!

Mea culpa. I've seen too many posts like that which were dead serious.

In the game canon, particularly in the Origin of Power missions, Natural powers are about training and self focus. This happens to mesh very well with martial arts (no caps - I don't mean the powerset), athletics, and maybe old-school eastern-style (non-mutant, non-magic) psychic power.

I think it's worth noting, though, that in CoH Natural characters are taking that to rather Dragonball-esque levels of achievement. A lot of people on the forums do things like eschew travel powers or avoid flashy powersets (like Fire Blast) in the interest of mimicking levels of power a "baseline", if exceptional, human would have. But based on the Origin of Power dialogs, I think that in CoH, your level 50 Natural character is standing next to the Tech, Science, Magic and Mutant ones and beating face on true par with them.

I don't care how well trained and self-motivated you are, you have to be doing something pretty special to deal the same damage with your fists or feet as the guy in the high-tech power armor, the guy charged with the Power Cosmic, or the half-demon son of a god. Even if you're causing high damage because you have preternaturally good aim and timing, you're still doing something pretty superhuman.

I think the implication is that it's fine to be a Natural flier or super-speeder, a Natural Fire Blaster, or a Natural Stone Tank, even if you're human. You've figured out how to unlock or unleash something within yourself that lets you do things that other humans can't without having mutant genes, chemical alteration or bombardment by strange radiations. Many of the origins have some tendency to overlap conceptually, and I think "natural" power at this level is borderline mysticism, but I think it's worth considering that "Natural Origin" may mean a lot more than just highly trained and athletic.

Heh. That makes me glad I don't use that power. When I got it I was all like "cool!" Then I realized I liked knowing where I haven't been in most places (even outdoors sometimes), and almost never use it as a result. The Shadow Shard is, I think, the only exception so far.

Odd. I've never seen stealth take an applied effect's visuals with it. That's why I postulated it was -perception rather than +stealth.

One of the main limiters to the set's performance is one of its main attractions - the animations. When you start getting into how much damage/time you can dole out with a mature build, damage per animation time becomes a key metric for determining your best attacks. Because of its long animations, DP has some unusually low values for its attacks in terms of this metric. As mentioned, this probably is most noticeable on a Blaster, where pumping out gobs of damage is how you stay alive, generally as opposed to things like secondary effects on your attacks.

Is it recovery resistance it grants? Based on the in-game power info, it looks to me like it grants end drain resistance, which is slightly different.

I haven't run the new arc. That sounds more like they are blinding you than using a +stealth power.

10 alignment (tip) missions + 1 morality missions = 1 alignment merit. After doing an alignment mission you lock one of your 5 progress slots for 20 hours, so you can only earn approximately one alignment merit per edit:two calendar days. You can also buy a merit outright for 20M inf and 50 Reward Merits, and I believe that's also on its own 20 hour cooldown timer (one purchase per 20 hours).

And I do believe that AVs share that 800 base endurance (and attendant large end point/sec recovery rate).

Sadly, that's not the problem for some of us. I have never logged in via boards.coh.com. I don't have any cookies for it.

I'm pretty sure we've had it on redname authority that they're working as designed. (If I'm correct, it was a long time ago now - not sure I could find it.) They were changed very early on (I9 beta?) to their current stats. They are not intended to be unique.

A Brute is probably the simplest thing you could try. Melee ATs in this game are generally a bit more forgiving due to their higher HP, mez protection and mitigation powers (shields).

However, you may not need to play something "simple". In that case, you need some sense of what the ATs do to try and compare against what you like to play on hero side.

• Brute: Plays something like a Scrapper with Tanker powersets. Tougher than a Scrapper, and can tank, but not as tough as a Tanker without (a lot of) buffs from teammates. Not quite as damaging blow-per-blow as a Scrapper, but still extremely effective. Edit: Fury tends you towards a "go, go, go!" mindset with this AT.
• Corruptor: Extremely similar to a Defender, but with blasts as the primary. More damage per blast than a Defender, especially on a team, but generally not as strong at buffing, debuffing or mezzing. Still, plenty good at buffing and debuffing.
• Stalker: Kind of like a melee blaster. Lower HP than Scrappers, but with some tricks they don't have, like near-perfect stealth and a backstab of doom. I recommend this AT if you enjoy the "imma kill you before you kill me even though I'm kinda fragile" that is popular with some Blaster players.
• Dominator: Try to imagine a Controller with "blapper" powers - some hard-hitting blasts and melee attacks. The Domination mechanic is pretty interesting, and a Dominator with domination up lays out more mez magnitude per time than a Controller does with the same control set. Dominators put out some pretty good damage.
• Mastermind: No real analog with heroes. Your pets are your primary means of interacting with enemies, though some secondaries mean you'll be active at debuffing foes. A MM has some of the weakest personal stats of all ATs in the game, but their pets and the interactions with their pets make them some of the safest, easiest things to play that you can imagine. (Note: easiest to play does not imply easiest to learn to play!)

I hope that helps.