_Pine_

Generalities are just that. General.

Trying to get Smashing Lethal Defense on a positional defense toon is really horrible.

I also stand to believe that getting defensive bonuses on toons that are not primarily defense based, or have no DDR to begin with (Elec, DA) are going the wrong way. People in the present IO days are too focused on getting high amounts of defense. My personal opinion is that if you do not have the DDR to back up your defense, it is better to go for +HP instead. This might be that my first defensive toon was an SR toon, so anything sub 90% DDR is 'Squshie'. However It drives me mad when my defense drops like a rock in a pool. I would rather be able to take more hits with extra HP than spend lots of money on defensive bonuses that will drop as soon as I get debuffed.

Any one have a translated version of the OP's post? I felt I was going to die after reading the first couple 'imaginative grammar' sentences. 0_0

Then any one fighting a scrapper would complain that its too overpowered

Got a message saying " The chatserver is temporarily down. Please try again in a few minutes."
Also got a message from AE saying its down.
WWs doesn't seem to work.
Using the $target command isn't working (haven't tried the others)
Global Channels are completely down.
Global Tells are gone.
I have no global friends, or even a tab to look at my no global friends.

WTH happened! Did Jay press the big red button? :O!

There are a few pluses going for Fire/Kins, and quite a few negatives:

Positive:
+ Uncommonly resisted damage type
+ Good AoE (containment + Hot Feet + Fulcrum Shift is very good)
+ Unsuppressed Movement Speed
+ Self Heal
+ Self Endurance Recovery
+ Plus Damage
+ Plus Recharge
+ Good even on SOs

Negatives:
- Only good against Smashing Lethal Damage types. (Wether you go with Stone, Fire, or Psi. All three have their perks)
- No Mez Protection (unless you use Psi, which even then, its not always perma)
- Bosses slow the killing speed down, sometimes making FS drop and making your killing time sky rocket
- +2 bosses or higher level mobs will make you need more than 4 pts of knock back prot.
- Pretty much needs a second build for teams.
- Can get very repetitive
- Imps are friggin annoying =)
- Not so powerful on teams.
- Comes with SB, so every friggin minute you will get some one to scream for their dose of crack.
- Only real debuff is -Regen. (not horrible, but if you want to kill some AV's, prepare to spam it)

Might I sugest the Razer Naga. (Hint, click the pic)

I tend to build resistive sets (besides Invuln) for +Rech and +HP.

+HP is by far a better bonus than +Regen.
Why do you say? Why Mr. Pine? I will tell you why.

+HP does exactly what it says, increases HP. By doing this, it allows you to take more damage (so its almost like adding resists, if you get what I'm saying) PLUS it will add to your regen (More HP means more HP/second regenerated because the regen rate is a percentage of your MAX HP). Finaly, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe Healing Flames is based on your MAX HP, and not your Base HP. This would make Healing Flames actually heal more adding even more survivability.

Lastly, +HP bonuses are friggin' easy to attain and are usualy only the first, second or third bonus. Most of my cheap builds just build for +HP.

Please don't take offense to this, but this is one of the worst builds I have seen posted on the stalker forums 0_0

First of, the defense soft cap is 45% defense to Melee, Ranged, AoE OR typed defense (easier to soft cap positional than typed imo, mainly because there is no toxic defense, and psi defense is rather hard to come by)

Most toons need two builds if they want to pvp and pve. The main reason is because powers behave differently in PvP and PvE. (ie flurry is a great power in PvP)

Most defensive melee toons I have seen build for Ranged Defense (stalkers doubly so, great to shark or AS then run away, ranged defense helps with that). Accuracy bonuses do not get DRed in PvP, but defense bonuses do (sucks to be defense).

So if you want my advice. get about 43% defense to melee, ranged, AoE without hide toggled on. This is for PvE.

For PvP, pile on as much ranged defense as possible. (I have an SR scrapper with 70% ranged defense on his PvP build. It gets DRed down to 42%. When I use Elude, it goes from over 100% in PvE to about 50% in PvP.)


Now, to focus on your most recent posted build:

Don't take Challenge. Intimidate is pretty bad, it is ok only when you have a stackable fear to go with it. Invoke Panic: same boat as Intimidate.

This frees you up to take 3 powers... I'm thinking Boxing -> Tough -> Weave.

DON'T WAIT TILL LEVEL 49 TO TAKE YOUR MELEE DEFENSE TOGGLE!!!!!!!!!!!.

0_0!!!!

Also, a personal trend I tend to follow is: Don't take a power just for the IO sets. Take powers you are going to actually use.

As for KB prot. 4 points will be fine for most PvE content. 12 points is good for all PvE content. 41 points for PvP content. You MIGHT be able to drop to around 20-30 points KB prot, counting on defense to mitigate some. But I guarantee you will die because some one will pop you with KB.

For /Nin, you want some sort of panic button (because of it's low DDR). Phase Shift, Shadow Meld, Hibernate, or Kuji-In Retsu work in this regard. I recommended Phase Shift for PvP, and Shadow Meld for PvE.

Again, I want to add. Don't slot secondary effects in Damage Powers, and don't pick up powers for their IO set bonuses. Pick the powers for what they do.

Can I have 90% DDR on my Energy Brute first !

I personally would like Katana to be Energy/Dark damage and not lethal. Anyway I could change that ?

Don't mean to be snarky, this is what your request sounds like. The whole idea about stealth is that you are hard to see. Why do you want a visible stealthy character... ? If you want an assassin that blatantly runs up and smashes you in the face, choose a brute or scrapper.

I really would like it if katana could be made to do energy/dark (maybe like a sith lightsaber or something). >.> but I am pretty sure its never gona happen

I would do it, just so I could legalize Dice PvP like what happened in the last tourney

Yes, you can slot both Decimation: BU proc and the Gausians: BU proc. They have different names. (Think purples for unique, can only slot one, but you can slot several uniques)

Procs that do damage, do damage. No they do not have to be slotted in the type of damage that they do. The chance for smashing damage tag just lets you know what type of damage will be done.

Finished the Cuda strike force just last week.

No fair >: (
I'm rolling a Kin Melee/Nrg brute too =(

(stole mah idea -_-)

Super Speed + Super Jump.

Fly is pretty bad for PvP, and Teleport isn't even an option. When you get attacked, when you attack, when you use and insp, when you heal... when you talk in broadcast (ok, that one is just made up :P) you get suppressed, and for teleport, suppression = no teleport at all, not just shorter range. So if you have teleport, half the time you are in a zone PvP, you won't be able to use it.

sounds like your just missing.

Is there a link to the NDA? >.> for those of us NOT in the beta, but want to read the literature anyways?

The alpha slot news was posted by Posi a couble days ago.

Interesting about the Purples an PvP ios. No clue about which merits are going to be used, eh?

I was going to mention that NCSoft does not allow a credit card to purchase anything if it is already tied to 2 accounts.

I don't know why, but it happened to me when I tried to buy an expansion for a friend of mine.

I would also like to note the naming convention of powers.

Most people use the x/x convention, where the 'x' on the left of the '/' is the primary, and the 'x' on the right of the '/' is the secondary.

Main reason you should know this is there is a wide distinction between a Fire/Stone tank and a Stone/Fire tank.

Tried this.

Level 50 build:
Level 30 build:

They both rolled and got level 50 IOs.

if you use -beta, it will want to create a new folder "C:/Program Files/COHBeta". After it creates the folder, just stop the updater, copy->paste the test folder into the beta folder. Then restart the -Beta shortcut