Alef_infinity

I'll offer my own commentary on Elec/Kin, having played it to 47. Super fun, but depending on the situation really survivable or really squishy. Anything that negates your controls really guts your survivability, and Kin doesn't provide a whole lot to back that up. But with your controls working, it's pretty good.

I'd actually recommend building for defense over recharge on the combo. Electric Control doesn't need recharge nearly as much as most control sets, and Kin provides plenty. Just take Hasten, Siphon Speed, and a bit of global speed (less than for many other Controller builds). The rest can be mostly focused on defense. With a good defensive build, you can afford to be more reckless (and get detoggled less often, too). You don't necessarily need defense if you play carefully, though, and the combo will perform decently on SOs, I'm sure. Just mind yourself more and remember your breakfrees.

I enjoy running right in as a Kin, and Conductive Aura meshes nicely. Arctic Air would probably be better, but Ice Control provides fewer alpha-breakers than Electric. Transference can help drain that single boss more rapidly on top of Conductive Aura.

Static Field is nice because Kin powers don't wake up sleeping foes so you can buff up more safely. Aggro-free confusion is nice, toss it in often before starting, then sleep and kin up. Those two are definitely my staple controls.

Jolting Chain, well, I still keep it around and use it when everything else fails, and it's nice for that. But I barely managed to keep it in my build. Kin isn't exactly one of those secondaries with long leisurely stretches of time to use 2 sec animating powers that buy you only a few seconds of safety. It could really use an animation time cut.

Gremlins, I'm honestly a bit "eh" on. The free jolting chains (that don't cost you precious animation seconds but on the flipside can't be timed for just when you need it) and some additional damge is alright, but they die pretty easily. I've spent fair stretches of time with them gone and barely noticed the absence.

As for damage, I mostly count Fulcrum Shift as my main damage contribution to teams and leave it at that. It's not like it's a trival contribution. It's likely far more than a high damaging control primary with a secondary that gives less damage buffs would contribute.

EDIT: For clarification, I usually play on teams.

Speaking of Ice Melee, an interesting combo I saw someone playing was an Fire/Ice tanker. While I don't have any personal experience with this combo and so can't speak for how it plays, I noticed that they would use Ice Patch to hold mobs in their Burn patches. Definitely an interesting tactic, and an unusual combo. Plus, it looked rather pretty with the fire colored the same blue as the ice.

I'll note that I do think some of the epic ATs' powers are suitably generic that they can be taken in a concept that isn't that AT. Kheldian form-shifting isn't generic enough, but human-form powers are (it's just light/dark energy stuff). Bane mace powers and crabs in general aren't really generic enough, but huntsman (rifle only) builds are. What you get is a riflesman with exceptional tactical training. And I can't really think of much about Widows that is visably tied to their Arachnos origin. The claws are ones available to Claws users on other melee AT. And the claws/mental blast combo isn't even one I recall seeing at all on Widows in game anyway--they've been pure claws or pure mental blast. For SoAs in general, you would just have to ignore the first costume (Arachnos-specific) you get and never use it. Unless at some point you roleplay disguising yourself as a SoA like in... I think it was one of the new redside intro arcs from when Mercy Isle got a redo?

And I'll admit to not having had read all of the Well lore there was--I was mostly going off the impressions I got from Mender Ramisel's arc. I just last night had an extended conversation with Prometheus, which I hadn't done before because I had thought he was only one of those NPCs there for systems explanation, like the Guy Who Knows Something at the Black Market and such. I hadn't realized he was basically a big lore info-dump. Anyone know of any other sources, or places I can talk to him? (I couldn't get him to talk about Batallion.) My talk with him's given me some very interesting thoughts about how the Well relates to my characters.

For those who haven't, I strongly suggest having a talk with him. It sounds more like the Well is more of a general embodiment of potential and power which people draw upon both consciously and unconsciously. So if your character does something that normal humans or even superheroes can't manage, they might be unconsciously drawing upon the potental shared by all humans, which the Well embodies.

I'm still figuring out where one of my character stands in regards to this, since she sort of does some of the same things the Well does (provides power to others). Mainly because she largely operates as a god of growth (things like banishment rituals and the God-Killer Sword would work against her), though definitely not as powerful as, say, Mot or Rularuu. I think in her case I'm comfortable enough having her play at Incarnate level without drawing from the Well--the Well embodies human potential, and she's more spirit than human, with alternative capablities and limits. For a few of my characters and one of another player's characters, she acts as a source for their powers in much the same way the Well does (and given the dramatic and weird transformations she tends to visit upon them, severence from her would definitely be lethal). Her generosity with the power she hands out tends to leave her less strong personally than she would otherwise be. I play her as Mind/Empathy--Empathy because of the power she grants to others, and Mind because she plays off people's desires in the same way that Mot plays off their despairs. Except that instead of absorbing the ones who give in fully to her, she makes them into her 'children'.

As for other characters, some of them I haven't really given that much thoughts. A fair number likely will incorporate the Well when (and if) they reach a sufficient power level (not all of them consciously). There're a couple or so extradimensional characters so that come from a sort of psychic collective which they draw their power from (separating them from it wouldn't be outright lethal but would be mentally tramatic, making them feel forsaken and alone). Those ones could reach Incarnate power levels, but often operate below it depending on how much of their collective's power is provided to them. A lot of regular threats wouldn't warrant that much power being diverted to them, but something like Mot would.

One of mine will never actually reach an Incarnate power level, but she operates more through trickery as she's a living dream entity. So all things she might do to you, including (eventual) Incarnate-level powers she might seem to exhibit are pure illusion. For example, the people she 'heals' and 'rezzes' were never actually hurt since she created the illusion of them being hurt in the first place. Though rather than the obvious Illusion Controlller, she's a Dark/Dark Controller because of her nature as a Nightmare (and because the ways the combo can screw with enemies just seemed to fit for a Nightmare).

EDIT: I just tried talking to Prometheus on a character who's done all of the trials instead of only some. He's more informative the more trials you've done. That explains why I missed out on so much of this lore. And, wow, some interesting relevations. But it gets more and more spoilery.

So, I like to play in melee range. I'd like more survivability. However, I'm not entirely sure what kind of build to proceed with. As I see it, my options (from the builds I've played with) are:

An Earth APP build with softcapped Smashing/Lethal and a fair deal of recharge. Has Manuevers+Tactics+Veng but ends up omitting Jolting Chain. Really not sure what I'd drop for it.

An Earth APP build with softcapped Smashing/Lethal/Ranged but less recharge. It omits Hasten and Veng from the above build, but manages to achieve 83.8%-93.8% recharge (depending on how many purples I use) anyway without counting Speed Boost.

A Mace PPP build with softcapped Smashing/Lethal/Energy. This one's a little more flexible in power picks and doesn't sacrifice Jolting Chain, but all it really takes from the PPP is the shield. It doesn't get Earth goodness.

Overall my feelings from playing her to level 47 so far are that Elec/Kin doesn't need a whole lot of recharge for what it does. In terms of power recharge, I felt like I was mostly doing fine with just Hasten, Siphon Speed, and a build with a mixture of SOs and frankenslotting. Hmm, actually, if I omit Hasten from those builds, I could fit in Jolting Chain or another power I skipped. The only real downside is that I won't be able to spam attacks as smoothly, but I tend to use kinetic and control powers more than I use attacks (other than using the hold). Hmmm.

Sorry for not including builds, but I figured three builds would be a lot to review and that it'd be better to give a general overlook before deciding what kind of build to focus on improving. I can give builds if requested.

Yeah, I had to specifically look up information on how to slot Carrion Creepers in order to advise someone on a Plant/Dark build, and even the relatively recent post I found turned out to be wrong. Don't worry about it.

Soul Mastery is indeed more inefficient.

This game isn't so hard that you can't choose inefficient choices just for fun. Especially since your primary and secondary will likely make a far larger impact than the ancillary.

Yeah, on Time Manipulation, you can pretty much softcap every single defense in regular content on a SO build, particularly if you select Illusion for Group Invisibility. I checked not long after I started thinking about the comparison between Fade and Farsight. Dark Affinity at least requires a fairly high high recharge build and a bit of added defense building.

I will say that, looking at Dark Aff builds, and seeing the kinds of defenses they're capable of reaching, it really did feel to me like the devs didn't really give much thought to how permable Fade would add up on top of Shadow Fell. But then again, perm PBed Farsight is pretty nutso too. And a /Force Field can softcap everyone but themselves (and a Defender can softcap everyone else to the Incarnate cap). So maybe it's just defense in this game that's nuts. Which really is more of a general observation and nothing new.

And, after all, that's only really a problem on pretty extreme levels of cooldown reduction that you simply wouldn't see in many other games, because it'd be way too difficult to balance around. But this game is the way it is, and despite weird balance issues I must admit it's a fun game. But that's more of a general topic and off point to the thread.

Dark Affinity is kinda a weird beast, though, in that it got two of its powers removed because they were slated to go into Dark Control. What do you even replace Fearsome Stare with? It really feels like they came up with an imperfect answer.

Also, that's pretty much the same buff philosophy I go with. "Everyone's roughly in the same spot? HIT PBAOE BUFF. Okay, I missed that one guy who lagged behind/went off elsewhere. Eh, they'll be fine, probably. Well, if they start getting a beating, I'll just go do my best to save their butt."

Scrappers have something of their own: the highest no caveat damage and the durability to deliever it safely. By "no caveat", I meant they don't have to worry about Fury like Brutes do or hop through the hoops Stalkers have to jump through to achieve that high ST DPS (not AoE, ST). They might not have shiny mechanisms, but I see a ton of them on teams. I understand there might be a certain envy of Stalkers getting something shiny, but there're people who like Scrappers' simplicity (at least some've already posted in this thread).

In short, scrappers are workhorse melee DPS characters and that's essentially their role in the game. And it seems like they're doing just fine at that role.

If that's not interesting enough, you might want to try out the more 'fancy' melee ATs. I'm personally not really playing scrappers, but that's in large part because I play far more support ATs than melee ATs (controllers being in the largest majority, but with other support ATs following them in numbers). And my current favorite melee character's a Dark/Stone Tanker both because I like mezzes and knockdowns, and because I enjoy helping keeping the team going smoothly. What I'm saying is that we all have different tastes and you might be finding that the Scrapper AT isn't as much to your taste as you had thought.

Alternatively, you might want to try the newer melee sets, which seem to be tending toward more fancy mechanisms like the one Stalkers just got. Heck, I recently tried a Street Justice Stalker on the test server and it was a little too much for me juggling both the mechanisms of StJ combos and Assassin Focus. Seems like I can only really comfortably manage one such mechanism at a time.

As for "what could it hurt"?, it's a matter of dev prioritization. Not just the time to code (which for some of the suggestions might be trival), but the time to decide what to code (i.e. design time). I'd rather see the attention paid to archetypes and powersets with real issues - the Blaster threads having convinced me they need real help, for one.

I can tell, just by hearing you have Hasten perma and eyeballing your Fade slotting, that you have Fade perma. And checking with my edited database confirms it.

A counterargument about Oppressive Gloom: the main attraction of the power for me is that you can use it just fine with just a single Accuracy IO in it, which frees up slots for other thing. It's endurance cheap and the stun duration is fine for an aura, so all you need is accuracy. As for status stacking, overall there're considerably more powersets that apply stun than those that apply fear. (Not to mention that Dark Control gets a stun too, though I usually only use mine when the fear+tohit debuffage isn't enough.)

Meanwhile, Cloak of Fear needs a lot of slotting to be even halfway decent. It's pricy in terms of endurance (more so even with slotting than OG unslotted) and has low accuracy (though you can probably get away with not slotting for fear duration, too). However, fear works on some mobs where stuns wouldn't (and vice versa, I believe). Also, it doesn't suppress mob attacks as completely as stun does. On the upside, it doesn't cause wandering like stun does.

In the end you can use personal preference. It's usually best to focus on the status aura that corresponds with what your attack set inflicts (for example, I run Oppressive Gloom with Stone Melee), but if your attack set desn't inflict either of those two statuses, you can pick what you like.

The small group I mainly RP with have pretty much rewritten and retconned a fair bit of game lore in our personal canon. A fair bit of it was lore we considered poorly written.

For example, in-lore, a non-Incarnate can totally punk an Incarnate and steal their powers with a deus ex machina ritual. Kinda makes that special status less special! But then again, the Well of Furies is pretty much deus ex machina in its own ways. Deus ex machina gives, deus ex machina takes away. (That's a big clue to why I don't particularly care where people say their Incarnate powers come from. If they want to make up their own unique deus ex machina or even just make it a personal story about a slow journey to cosmic levels of power, it doesn't bother me.)

The group I play with pretty much rewrote much of that plot to be more plausible (espeically considering that the staff writer who wrote that one ignored some game lore that would've made the events of that overall arc easier to swallow).

But, anyway, so I'm used to not taking game lore for granted. I wouldn't roleplay our own divigent variant of history outside this group, mind. A lot of things happened differently due to a number of major in-group plots we ran. For example in our personal timeline, Crey's been pretty much broken up, but that was after a very long running story arc with them as the primary antagonist, spanning a lot of RP and multiple AE arcs.

Of course, public RP is different, yes. You're playing in a shared world. That requires common consensus, and the game lore forms a baseline for that.

But the thing is, this shared world's far more open than most MMORPG worlds. There's all kinds of weird stuff, and it pretty much follows the superhero tradition of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. And it'd be a boring comic universe if everyone got their powers from the same source, which is what the Incarnate storyline pretty much does.

In the end, I don't care too much about concept reflavoring. On the extreme end, it does stretch my credibility if someone turns into a squid/crab and then claims they aren't a Kheldian, but I can pretty much accept people who play human-form-only Kheldians and claim they aren't Kheldians. And I've seen at least one person with an interesting bio about how they got Kheldian-like capabilities from a Kheldian-based source without necessarily becoming a Kheldian. In other words, acknowledging the lore but doing their own spin on that.

For things like that, I prefer conceptual flexibility. The flexibility of the superhero setting is one thing I do appreciate about it. And it's pretty much impossible to fully recapture that flexibility in a game like City of Heroes.

Are you going to insist that someone's Water Blast character is really an Energy Blast character, or that their Sand Armor or Spore Armor character is really a Dark Armor character? That's the same kind of conceptual rigidity you're advocating here.

Furthermore, in a world as open as CoH's (given how it's connected to multiple universes), it absolutely beggars my mind to think that the Well of Furies is the single, sole source of Incarnate-level power in the entire multiverse.

Procs will do more damage than slotting for damage, yes. And, no, they aren't autohit. Anyway, you can just slot it with however much accuracy you want. Targeted AoE sets will work for that, or you can just use straight accuracy IOs.

The targeted AoE and slow procs, from what I heard here, are the most effective. Other procs don't go off even remotely as often.

Fade still isn't permanent. You really need to max out the recharge enhancement in it to have any real hope at that. Thus why I suggested the 3 Membrane and 1 LotG proc slotting--it's the most efficient possible slotting that still retains that LotG recharge bonus. You can just lose the sixth slot in Seeds of Confusion (dropping the Confused) and Vines, and you'll still be softcapped to Ranged. That's how much excess Ranged defense you had.

A question. Are you really having enough endurance issues that you need that Vigor? I'm asking because that Agility gives you a more comfortable margin to have Hasten and Fade permanent in, as well as boosting the recharge of your other powers. Without it, Fade might have a slight amount of downtime, particularly if you don't hit it right away.

If you build to assume Agility, you could remove a number of those slots where you chased defensive bonuses and still be softcapped. Furthermore, you have Soul Absorption. It will help not only you but your team as well with endurance issues (and giving them some extra regen).

Also, the accolades are worthwhile getting. They give pretty substantial boosts to max HP and endurance. The latter will particularly help.

Here's an example of a build to demonstrate what you can achieve building with taking Agility into consideration. Every single one of your defenses are at least 44.8%, which is enough for softcap. And I do mean every single one. Typed, positional, you have it all.

Check out the difference in how much endurance you regen per second when you turn the accolades on and off. It's an easy .34/sec. That's how much of a difference the +max endurance from the accolades makes. Furthermore, you have 2/sec regen even if you run Darkest Night nonstop.

I'd actually consider it a real monster of a build.

Fade gives a bit more than 14% to all (or 16% with the Agility Alpha), fully slotted. My suggested slotting tends to be 3 Membranes and 1 LotG 7.5% recharge, or something similar to that. It's a lot easier to perm if you fully enhance it for recharge. You'd have to free up one slot from somewhere, probably the damage proc in Twilight Servant since it only fires on a couple or so of its powers anyway.

Funnily enough, you haven't managed to softcap Smashing/Lethal (it's sitting at 42%), but you've actually managed something better--you've softcapped all positionals. In fact, your ranged defense's at 51%. However, Fade's shy of permanent. You would want to either get more set recharge bonuses, or pick one of the recharge boosting Alphas. Probably Spiritual.

In fact, turning Incarnate powers on, I see you've picked Agility. Not a bad choice, as it would enhance the team's defense, not just your own (as well as enhancing Soul Absorption). However, you're now overkill on defense bonuses.

I suggest either losing some defense and picking up other set bonuses or swapping out for Spiritual which would enhance Twilight Grasp. As well, you can actually get a pretty significant amount of team regen buffage (Willpower levels of regen) out of the Plant/Dark combo. You might want to consider changing your build to take Spirit Tree and enhance Soul Absorption (which can now be used against living foes) for healing. Just something to consider. But even if you don't put any more slots in Soul Absorption, you'll want accuracy in it. You might have to replace that one slot's recharge IO with an accuracy IO.

Also, Howling Twilight really shouldn't be skipped as it's not only an AoE resurrection power, it's also got a pretty hefty regen debuff (and mag 2 stun and some recharge debuff as well).

Oh, and you've got six 6.25% recharge bonuses from sets. That's over the cap of five, so one of those bonuses aren't applying at all. You could try slotting Strangler with four Basilisks and two damage IOs. Or you could try proccing Carrion Creepers out instead. Apparently it's fairly damaging with procs. You want enough recharge to make it permanent and some accuracy, as well as the slow and TAoE damage procs (the PvP one might be a bit expensive so you might have to skip it).

Yeah, listen to what Carnifex says. Finding up-to-date information on Creepers isn't exactly the easiest thing. I did my best, but it looks like I found a post with obsolete information. Some good advice in general there.

Mostly looks pretty decent, though it does underslot a few powers.

Viewing this with my edited database, Fade with that slotting will be permanent and grant 14% defense to all, putting you 3% above the S/L softcap. If you want to save a couple of slots, I suggest using 3 Membranes and 1 LotG. It would allow you to slot up some of your other powers better. I suggest sticking those two slots into Stranger and Entangle to add Accuracy/Damage/Recharge Thunderstrikes, so that they at least become more decent attacks (right now they're rather underslotted). You get more global accuracy back than you lost from ditching the LotG set, so all you lose out on is that Max HP bonus (you're already capped anyway with Earth's Embrace) and a little bit of regen that won't matter with how much you have already.

Darkest Night is so underslotted that if you're going to use just one or two slots, I suggest just sticking two Enzymes in it and calling it a day. At least then you could use it for damage and tohit debuffing without burning quite so much endurance. As is, what you're set muling it for isn't particularly worth investing a second slot.

I don't think you really need that Shield Wall proc. It's not like 3% resistance will make much of a difference with how little resistance you have. The proc's more for those with already high resistances who want to squeeze a little more out (in other works, melee types with resistance sets).

Fly Trap could use a little more damage, but it's somewhat passable since you likely aren't counting on it as a major component of your damage. You can use the slot you freed up by ditching the Shield Wall proc to add in a damage IO here, though.

You might want to slot Soul Absorption with an Accurate Healing set, or at least replace that enmod IO with an accuracy IO (the latter is likely better if you want to keep that 5% recharge bonus). It does require a to-hit check against living targets now.

Carrion Creeper is sorta a weird power with its complex mechanisms. Some more info on how procs affect it (so you can make your own decisions on what to slot) can be found at this link. At any rate, you almost certainly want a little more accuracy than you currently have slotted in it. Try replacing the two Positron's with an Accuracy IO and a Recharge IO. That makes it permanent and gives it more overall accuracy.

Replace the Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge in Dark Servant with the Accuracy/Recharge from the same set. That'll make it miss a little less often.

And after some work: I present to you a S/L/E softcapped build with 87.5% global recharge. It's also one purple inspiration away from softcapping against negative and pretty much any ranged type attack out there. I went this route because I was pretty close to capped against energy already and I ran up against the rule of 5 for 6.25% recharge bonuse anyway. To get more recharge, I would've had to use purples, and I decided to keep this a little cheaper. Normally having the Gradiator unique in a 'budget' build would be ridiculous, but prices've dipped recently. I did sacrifice 6.25% recharge to get to softcap instead of ending up 3% short, but I think I'm okay with this.

Clarity was skipped because while nice, it's a little less necessary with people running around with Claion and me providing some mez protection with Sonic Dispersion. I'll probably go with Barrier and/or Rebirth for the most part, though.

The stealth in Fly is to help you quickly get into position unseen since Hover's included in the defense totals.

Pretty much all of the non-snipe attacks are necessary to maxmize Beam Rifle's offensive potential against groups and hard targets. Normally Single Shot would be skippable, but it gets a 75% regen debuff which makes it valuable enough against hard targets.

This build pretty much needs Cardiac, but it's kinda hard to avoid that with Sonic Resonance and the resistance and range bonuses are useful too.

I didn't ask for a C&P translation of that build, especially one that clearly didn't really look at Beam Rifle judging from its power picks (Skipping Disintegrate and Lancer Shot? Taking the snipe instead?). I asked about survivability of softcapped S/L/E/N/Ranged so I could determinate my own build goals. I suspect that kind of defense's quite sufficient, so I'll just make my own build.

Edit: I must've been quite tired. I don't know where I saw the softcapped Energy/Ranged defenses. Silas's build has Smashing/Lethal.

Here's a question. Have you found your high recharge S/L/E/Ranged capped Fire/Sonic build to be sufficiently survivable? I'm asking because I think I might like that type of build better than the potentially overkill Beam/Sonic build I came up with 75% S/L resists, over 50% energy, and softcapped ranged/AOE but only 53.8% global recharge (and no Hasten). Plus it doesn't have Clarity, Sonic Cage, or Aim, though it does have Assault and Veng. It's very much a hoverblasting oriented build, though that works reasonably well with Beam's ranged preference at least. It doesn't have as much defense against enemies coming up and punching you in the face, even if it does have high resists against the most common melee damages.

But a high recharge S/L/E/Ranged Beam/Sonic build might be overall better in general for the majority of play.

You might want to take into accord that as of the latest patch, Fade's now permable with 60 second duration/210 recharge. A build with zero ranged defense other than throwing in that extra slot to six-slot instead of five-slot the ATO and Contagious Confusion (and a very incidental 1.25% bonfus from Baslisk's Gaze that I just noticed) but with Fade permanent actually has as much ranged defense (and more general defense aross the board) as your latest build with some ranged defense and non-permanent Fade. Even without Hover turned on, it has 36.1% ranged defense (and 38.7% with it turned on). Plus it gives the Fade buff to the entire party. (And I'm running Manuevers as well).

With the kind of build focus you've got, I'm pretty sure you could outright softcap ranged defense with little sacrifice if you slotted up Fade. I decided I couldn't be bothered with that myself and focused on team defensive buffs instead, but as I said, we have differing build priorities and that's fine.

EDIT: Build removed since I just remembered that I modified my database to account for the Fade changes, so if you open it, you won't get the same results. But all you really need is the kind of recharge you're already throwing around in your build plus decent defense+recharge slotting. 4-slotted LotG set and a Recharge IO is the kind of slotting I'm talking about here, though I'm sure more efficient slotting such as three Defense/recharge Hami-O's and a LotG 7.5% recharge proc could be used. So, really, all you need is three slots from somewhere to turn Fade permanent. That Hami-O slotting would give you 14.85% additional defense across the board from Fade. So you only need to build for 31% ranged defense plus the kind of recharge you have right now.