_Tundra_

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Although Fire Breath is about twice the damage of Short Circuit, having 4 attacks that you can use as PBAoEs could be pretty neat ( FSC, Combustion, Lightning Ball and Short Circuit ). A Fire/Fire blaster would have to jump out to reposition for the Fire Breath. An Elec/Fire could just hold still.

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And Burn. And Hot Feet. It's certainly not a solo build, but with a Tank, 'troller or ideally both along nothing touches it for AoE mayhem.

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My money is currently on Fire/Elec. Arguments can go around and around on it all they like

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Pah, Elec/Fire is the BOMB - quite literally. PBAoE madness FTW every time for me

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Just thought I'd post to say I reactivated my account today and I'll be on occassionally for at least the month I've paid for

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Hiya, good to see you back.

Haven't been around much myself recently, but I'm sure I'll manage to catch up with you when you're on...

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try dark/ea its brilliant, i liked it and i'm sure u will 2

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But rather bad for teaming. No taunt aura, not many AoE attacks.

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But on the plus side, much less need for the Fitness pool, so easier to fit Taunt itself into your build.

Sorry to see you go mate, but an enjoyable RL is about the best reason I can think of.

Maxwell's Demon will be wearing the Burning Pants of DOOOM in your honour.

First question is, will your friend be teaming with a tank a lot? If not it may be a rather frustrating first toon...

Elec/Fire does really wonderful PBAoE damage right from very low levels, but without someone tp draw the aggro away you'll wind up very dead, very quick.

Much as I love flight on many toons, I wouldn't reccomend it for this build - either SS for setting up PBAoEs or Leaping for Acrobatics would be better.

The core attacks all come early, which is nice - Ball Lightning, Combustion, Fire Sword Circle and Short Circuit make up an attack chain that will pretty much wipe out entire spawns and leave bosses with a sliver of health.

My own E/F is in the mid-40's and currently not being played much as altitis has had me on villains instead. I could post his build if it would help, though.

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I can say with experience that burn and hot feet on a fire blaster looks really cool and will get you killed time and time again. The rooting from burn makes you into a target just waiting to go splat and hot feet doesn't kick in fast enough to get enemies to back off. I tried using hot feet and blazing aura as damage increase tools and just got creamed for it. Acrobatics was much more useful.

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I don't know how recently you've tried it, but the rooting time of Burn was reduced quite significantly not so long ago. I find it to be incredibly effective - in fact I'd say it's by far the most effective and efficient single target attack on my Elec/Fire Blaster. Also a very good AoE attack when on a team, but both its DPS and DPE make it well worth using as a single target attack when solo.

Hot Feet is more problematic, though. The damage is good, but the fleeing effect is far too counterproductive to makle it useful most of the time.

I tried slotting DP with Heals for a bit, and although your Regen rate can be pretty impressive your low HP will still make you pretty squishy. I much prefer the slotting you're already using, which has allowed me to happily run a Stamina free build.

Firing Dark blasts all over the place? The -ToHit from Dark should make you even harder to hit

[edit] Actually, I'd probably skip weave because of the heavy cost in powers to get it - you'll need Stamina with all those toggles, after all! I'd look to slot at least one of the Dark cones for -ToHit, possibly both of them. They have a base 9% debuff approx, which adds up to an awful lot of missed attacks once they're slotted and stacking!

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funny enough i just built a new dm scrapper up to siphon life level last night, it seems its not the exactly the same power i had back way back when, the end cost isnt nearly as hideous as before, its still a pants heal mind you but im gonna work with it and see how it goes.

it is a shame that when you critical with it you dont critical heal yourself though, that'd make the power something special

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I maybe should clarify a little... I didn't mean it's a dreadful power (and it certainly benefitted from the End reduction that came along with ED) - just that it's almost completely redundant for a /regen who already has a truckload of better healing ability.

I took it early on my DM/SR and never regretted it - kept me in the fight many a time.

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HI,
im lvling my first hero in COH
was wondering if siphon life is worth taking, or should i go for Touch of fear ?
ALso please tell how to slot siphon life if its usefull

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And back OT... Since you're a Regen (Look! I read your sig!) the little bit of healing you'll get from Siphon Life won't be much help. Touch of Fear, on the other hand, would be extremely useful.

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AFAIK there is no -ACC on granite mine has shown no signs of missing more than when out of granite.

[/ QUOTE ]It had -30% acc which was removedin I3, and now it has -30% dam and -65% rech.

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-70% recharge I think it was, MaX, but close enough

[/ QUOTE ]NoFuture states 65%

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-70% Run Speed, -65% Recharge according to the Prima guide. Easy to see where the confusion comes in, since most powers that debuff both movement and recharge do so by the same amount.

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With the AV changes, it appears taunt is now a necessity to keep AV's off the squishies. And even then its no joke. Im not sure a Granite could do it without heavy heavy slotting of taunt (3xrech, 3xtaunt) - has anyone tried this recently?


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My Granite tank can hold AV aggro quite comfortably. But then I've always been a heavy user of Provoke as well as Taunt (both well slotted).

IMO what a GA tank needs above all else (in order to act as a recovery tank) are as many means of grabbing aggro at range as possible to make up for the lack of mobility and the -Recharge. In my case these are mostly Taunt, Provoke and Ice Blast from the Epic. Stone Melee and SS offer some options here too.

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well i think this power is a joke.
i tried it on test server, and i decided to skip it.

It's NOT a toggle, you cast it (very poor graphic effect, you almost dont notice it..), you HAVE TO BE on the ground, you deals some minor pbaoe dmg and if you were immobilized, you'll be free.
that's all.


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Well, it's not much use (if any) for status protection - but the damage is anything but minor. In fact on my Elec/Fire it's comfortably my most effective single target attack. A hint, /Fire also contains a single target Immob that you can't avoid taking. Put the two together with Build Up and sit back an watch 'em burn.

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Ice Tank

Am a pure taunt bot, no attacking.

Thinking about dropping fitness for presence pool, Extra taunts for aggro and fear AoE along with Ice Slick to mitigate incoming damage.

Does anyone know how accurate the taunts are (will one acc do?) and what the end cost of the powers are?

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Anything you really need an extra taunt for will probably be higher level than you, so you'd be better off with more than one Acc in there. I think there's a -Acc on the Presence pool Taunts (ie. base Acc <1) but I'm not sure of the numbers - just seem to remember a patch note saying they'd been reduced at some point.

The fear powers can be very usful. I had them on Tundra when levelling through the 40's and they saw a lot of use. I wouldn't spec out of fitness to build them in, though. They're very End expensive, especially the AoE one.

It probably is a little bit OTT though, to be honest. I had the extra taunt to counteract the slowing effect of Granite and the Fears as I was already in the pool.

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Yes, I was....Is lightning clap similiar animation to hand clap then?

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Yes - it has shorter activation time and shorter recharge than Thunder Clap, but a smaller AoE. It's a much better power IMO.

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Should I get Lightning Clap?

[/ QUOTE ]A stun can be useful to drop acro, but you already have multiple holds to do that, and the animation is long.

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Actually, I like Lightning Clap partly because it has a nice short activation suitable for a panic button (approx. 1.2 sec.). Are you confusing it with the Storm Defender Thunder clap, which has a much longer activation? (approc. 2.4 sec.)

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Brute = Rage = Higher damage + Small heal thrown in for free.


[/ QUOTE ]300% of pitiful damage=still pitiful damage. If you want a fast, cheap attack, AS is superior.

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The damage from Siphon Life is nowhere near that poor - it's moderate damage and roughly the same as AS per. attack. Sure it costs more and recharges more slowly - but then AS isn't a Heal or a ToHit debuff, and 15s is a pretty reasonable recharge for a Heal - 20% 3-slotted, which isn't too tiny a heal, either.

SL is nowhere near as bad as you're suggesting.

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Running around with a DM/Fire Brute has proven a lot of fun for me, and finally gotten me interested in CoV again after a long period on CoH.

Anyway, I just wondered, in your opinions how is it best to slot Siphon Life?

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On my DM/SR Scrapper I had it slotted 2xAcc, 3xHeal, 1xEndRec.

As a /Fire Brute, you should have access to a better self heal from your secondary and Siphon Life is very End expensive to use just to keep Fury building - although I can see that the frequent top-ups of small amounts of HP will help a bit. There are probably better powers to pick at most points, though. With a DEF based set it can be worthwhile as it allows you to keep stacking -ToHit debuffs, which helps with staying alive, but it doesn't really complement /Fire too well.

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From my experience the empowerment buffs may be of help in some PvE situation where a solo player needs help or something, but in PVP they are pretty pointless.

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I'd fully agree most of them are almost entirely useless - in either a PvE or PvP context.

KB protection is very useful for squishies, though. Certainly in PvE and I'd have thought an hour of it would be enough to be worthwhile in PvP as well. I'd imagine there are plenty of situations where an hour's worth of End drain resistance could be useful in either, as well.

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I am planning to take Dark Consumption. Question: Do I need stamina if I get DC at level 18?

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You can afford to put it off a bit (I took it at 30) but you'll probably still want it. With Quickness, Hasten and recharges of its own DC is up often enough to get you by without Stamina - the problem is that when your End is low there usually aren't many enemies left. That means aggroing a new group to fill up your End - which is a little risky but worked OK for me.

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Three slotted health is....a downtime reducer, and not much else. Aid self, on the other hand, is a huge survivability boost, and I really wouldn't recommend missing it if you want to be able to take damage.

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On a tanker 3 slotted health really makes a moderate difference. I can't speak for Brutes. I imagine Aid self is far superior.

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Particularly since ElA is otherwise missing a self heal. Aid Self is a clear winner.

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HI all

I have tried spines power set but not liking it to much atm.
So any other's realy good builds for pve only as i never do pvp and i also would like a fast power set as i have got a stone tanker and now i wan't a bit of speed lol.

thanks.

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Do you mostly solo, play in small teams or in large teams? If you're in large teams the MaX is right, the AoE from Spines is the way to go. Not much help as you've already found you don't like it.

Otherwise, there aren't really any terribly gimpy sets or bad combinations for scrappers. /SR and /Invuln both take a while to come into their own (although both can be great at high levels). /Regen is probably the easiest secondary to get going with.

All of the primaries have something to recommend them - Claws, Katana and Martial Arts are the fast ones, Spines does nice AoE, Broadsword does high damage per. hit (I found the slowness of it pretty wearing, though) and Dark Melee is an interesting bag of tricks that mostly needs to concentrate on single target damage.

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it also cranks up your DPE even though you can fire off 3 attacks in the time it takes (actually prolly more like 2)

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It really is three attacks! CB+HP+BL = 3.14s activation time, TS = 3.3s activation time. You need to cue up each attack whilst the previous one's animating, of course, but we all do that anyway, right? You could also swap Electric Fence for BL which would improve DPE and damage DPS a little.

I don't have the numbers to hand to work out DPS and DPE, but I'd expect the three attack chain to be much higher DPS, much lower DPE.

That said, I still like TS - it's been in and out of my build a couple of times and may well come back in next time I respec. The price Elec/Elec pays for having too many nice powers to choose from

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Only problem I had with all them AoE's is the amount of aggro it pulls but if you can kill them quick it don't really matter.

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Aggro problems from the AoEs are much, much worse if you're knocking things out of End Drain range with Thunder Strike, which was one of the main reasons why I didn't like it.

It's also horribly slow in an otherwise very fast build - you can fire off Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch and Ball Lightning in the time it takes to activate Thunder Strike, which for me ruled it out just because it was so frustrating waiting for it to animate...

Lots of people like it, though, and I agree it looks cool when other people are using it.