AshWind

See I actually saw the lower base damage as a benefit, now you have to proc it out if your going to use it. I like to run tentacles with 4 damage procs and a couple acc/dam combos, I intend to switch those for acc/end from immobilize if available.

I just like the options its going to provide:
1) aoe from range immobilize/nightfall (which also coincides with the cone fear too)
2) Aoe up close engulfing shadows/immobilize.

The cone is wide enough you can use it from fairly close in and get 80% of most spawns. I am comfortable moving back and forth to setup the dark blast cones, this just makes it much easier and smoother game play.

The other nice thing this is aoe you are getting very early. I use those dam/rech/proc things they give us with modest results. Pure damage procs work alot better in my tentacles, I am hoping that is due to a difference in %chance and not in enhancement mechanics.

Again too early to confirm but I like the potential alot.

All that said the Fire/dark with hotfeet and engulfing darkness seems sweet. The added benefit of smoke becoming a much more useful power due to the synergy as well. Gosh now I want to make one of these now!

Originally I was going down the same path as you it just looked like fire/dark would synergize a bit more than dark/dark. I especially did not like the slightly longer animation on the single target hold and still don't (but its not bad so far in game).

Then I saw the animation for possesion and there is no going back. I have never been a big fan of confusion powers but the cool swirling 3 fireballs and then your possesed mob turns black like a living shadow with glowing eyes. Just wow, the animation team hit a home run on this power.

Also as a long time closet freak for dark blast the combo of teneberous tentacles and nightfall does a suprising amount of aoe damage if you proc out tentacles. I am not sure if they intended to or not but the dark/ aoe immobilize lets you put in a the same types of procs and is a wider deeper cone than tentacles with the same animation cast time, shorter recharge timer but more endurance cost. It still needs some frankenslotting to drop the endurance cost but this could dramatically up the aoe potential of this toon beyond what many are stating it to be currently.

I am still too low to verify whether or not the procing scheme of dark control immobilize works or not but am fairly confident this is going to be a big boon to the dark/dark combo in particular. Especially if the cones match up better in shape and dimension, this has long been my beef with dark blast. I am one happy little gamer so far!

My current favorite aoe toon is a Dual Pistols/Mental Manipulation blaster and I am not a fan of blasters at all.

SS/fire/mu brute is great too but a bit common, but for good reason.

I also enjoy my fire/cold corruptor it dishes an incredible amount of aoe and brings a lot to any team, very fun combo. This toon has long been one of my favorite pairings in the entire game.

I forgot Plant/fire/fire dominator, this is in all probability the highest damaging aoe toon in the game.

My big problem with Khelds was how tangled the design and gameplay was, yes you could do a little bit of everything but it was hard to make a full attack chain. Am I supposed to stay at range, or melee, with the low damage on melee attacks and no mez protection I felt like a defender with no team buffs. When combined with the increasing number of mezzes attached to every other attack of mobs to keep the game interesting, Khelds always seemed to lag behind.

The perma-lightform made my PB playable again, I really enjoy the change. The change to inner lightform has not been touted as much but I think might be more important to PB's than the lightform change. The problem of course is with strong mez protection and max resistance in one power the forms are useless to me. I still take nova for exemping down but the forms have problems. They do not offer full playstyle right off the bat, there are notable lags in the attack chains in both forms where you are doing nothing. Recharge IO's and more slots cure this but every other set in the game by level 8 offers a full attack chain. The lack of a reasonable attack chain in each form seems silly. The form shift animation is too slow to argue that you can safely make a chain between forms, if this is the intended goal then this animation time needs to be calculated into all the attacks and the damages, recharge, activations increased accordingly. From years of CoH gameplay I can tell you they feel clunky and unrewarding but that's my personal experience with them.

Again the playstyle is extremely tangled...and don't get me wrong this is great fun to some extent, but I need a complete attack chain at either range/melee or enough buffs/debuffs to have a complete attack chain in a fight. The Warshade actually pulls the powers together nicely, however the PB until perma-lightform never really did this for me, heck this might be operator error, but based on how few PB's you would encounter in game I tend to suspect the design was broken.

I guess my best suggestion would be to keep human form viability and make the forms more broadly flavored to the other AT's. But whatever they do the forms need more powers to make them a viable playing experience. I am making an ASSUMPTION that they could add these powers to the form and balance them out to not make the pure AT's obsolete.

The problem then of course is slots. They probably won't consider this but by introducing AT specific IO's (it is coming soon isn't it?) they have an in game solution. Make the kheld only IO's broader and stronger due to the lack of slots the increased numbers of powers provide and allow for one set in each Form. I am of course making another assumption that more AT specific IO's will be introduced in the future.

After reading this too many assumptions but oh well.

I will say Rad's is by far the most fun snipe and thats because of the sound and the three big balls you blast out.

I can't stand snipes myself they are so slow and the rooting is painful. That said if you have a secondary like traps with setup and that is good defending an area then snipes are perfect for drawing mobs to you. It might be great with hurricane too.

You also need to learn the mob ai somewhat. If you are trying to pick off just outliers of large spawn or trying to pull the whole group. To pull the group target Lt's and bosses, and to pick them off get close enough that the spawn starts walking around and then target the mobs on the edges as they walk away from the center of group. In general to make the spawn recognize you are there and start moving gets you close enough to use other blasts making the snipe redundant and somewhat useless in my opinion.

I have a dark/traps that I really enjoy and is fairly pimped out.

In particular, I like to proc out Teneberous Tentacles, I can get 4 damage procs, decent acc/dam and some nice recovery bonuses. 2Javelin Volley, 2 Positron and you get a 4.5% recovery bonus while still getting some acc/dam/rech bonuses. Very impressive bang for your buck.

Gloom is incredible if you can afford purples I would put a set in here and either proc it out or maximize recharge, I went for recharge and really enjoy it.

I think apocalypse is kind of wasted in life drain. With life drain I would maximize the heal, acc, recharge and then damage, pretty much in that order. I use partial sets of the accurate heal sets for extra set bonuses. The trick is I use Teneberous tentacles as part of my single target attack chain, with the damage procs it is suprisingly potent. [I am of the opinion that the recharge on life drain is just too long to make it a consistent part of a single target attack chain, so I use it like a heal to top myself off, but all dependent on playstyle.] I am an idiot, it looks like life drain has been dropped to 8 seconds recharge, I need to go fiddle around with the build some. This fast a recharge it is probably extremely viable in a single target attack chain.

I am not a fan of the thunderstrikes, especially since it looks like you are building for s/l defense. I would go with a decimation set or proc out dark blast.

Artic fog slotting looks odd to me, it has fairly good resists and decent defensive values too. I six slot it and maximize defensive value first and then resists on final builds, while leveling this is reversed, I maximize resist first and then defense. Also its an endurance hog so I like to slot it for over 50%end reduction too.

I like that build it is somewhat similar to mine. I do think you went overboard on recharge, there are a lot of very tasty bonuses you can build for on Khelds such as s/l defense, damage, end recover, regen to mention the big ones for me.

In particular I like your slotting of the heals for bonuses and to save an extra slot, I actually am not a fan of doctored wounds in those two powers and I thought I was alone in that thought. I also like how you slotted photon seekers but if you want a way to up s/l defense the sovergin right set is popular here, I prefer your slotting myself.

I think I would put Hetcomb into Incandescent strike, I thought you wanted to put purple sets into your most damaging powers first? I am dropping a set of Kinetic combats into radiant strike, boxing, brawl. Which with the steadfast def, maunevers, weave, hover gives me in the 21ish def to s/l. Boxing with a set of stupefy's seems like wasted slots to me but just my opinion.

I am not taking kick but am taking tough to get my s/l resists capped with lightform running and you don't need any extra slots in tough (bonus!). The alternative would be to keep kick and add another set of kinetic combats and push up to 25% def s/l, if you can afford the gladiator 3%def proc you are getting close to 32.5%def to s/l. I view this as the magic number as just one purple now caps you to s/l. Also you dont want to neglect the other tasty bonuses you can get by overslotting for one particular bonus on a PB. I think their diverse powers and playstyle call for a more overlapping array of set bonuses.

I dont like combat jumping in your build, I would dump that for a more useful power and throw that luck of the gambler recharge into quantum acceleration. Maybe tough or one of the forms? I find perma lightform to make dwarf form obsolete and took Nova so I could slot the aoe for more recharge. On teams it lets me unload with a 3 ranged aoe powers before charging into melee. Also unsupressed travel in pvp is a pretty sweet deal too.

I slotted luminous detonation like you did but I also included a 6th slot for -res achilles heel proc, and in place of armageddon in solar flare put in Fury of the Gladiator. This nets me 2 aoe powers with the -res proc in them. I would argue that the -res proc in a single power is somewhat wasted from an efficiency standpoint where as aoe powers with -res maximize it. Fury of the Gladiator's bonuses are pretty decent with the added benefit of maybe giving me an edge if I ever stepped into pvp.

Along the PVP angle it altered how I slotted glinting eye too. Glinting eye, I am turning into a proc power, with as many procs as I can get at the expense of set bonuses while still trying to keep base acc/dam up with frankenslotting. I dont think this is optimal slotting but just how I like to slot this power on the off chance I did ever want to step into pvp.

Inner light, I only slot with 2 adjusted targeting, tohitbuff/rech, recharge and a recharge IO. I like the slots elsewhere. The recharge is nice but with perma lightform do you need the status protection? I am not sure, I rarely get mezzed with perma light form but it does happen so maybe everyone else knows something I dont?

If your hurting for stamina, I like at least two recharge IO's in conserve energy and I go for three. I am a frentic player and hard on the blue bar.

I really like your build, you have a couple different takes on slotting that are different from the norm and I think are possibly superior to common practices.

They are right to mention the negatives, but after playing it to 44 the set feels very solid and fun.

A defensive set that can be capped at level 25 with endless endurance, and a decent heal? Most the other sets dream of that kind of utility and overlapping coverage, it feels like a stronger ninjitsu. The s/l resist can approach 50% with tough, if I am not mistaken too. With all the spots for LOTG recharges and the built in recharge buff and its a very impressive package.

Very fun, relatively cheap to io, lots of utility it is rapidly becoming one of my favorite armors. You lack the offense of a damage aura, added aoe, extra damage buff of some of the other armors but the tradeoffs are pretty sweet and just speed up and fuel your primary attacks.

My only problem has been with carnival the gaping hole for psy hurts, but I actually neglected to slot my heal until into the 40s, I just was not getting hit enough to justify it. The faster heal really helps, and I think some creative IOing for range defense will fill in the hole perfectly. IO's definitely make this armor shine much faster and cheaper than resistance sets and most others in my humble opinion.

I highly recommend giving it a try.

Claws/EA is awfully fun too. I am a sucker for hybrid toons and claws with spin, shockwave, focus and the epic aoe, epic ranged make a pretty impressive tank mage type toon.


The new /EA is silly good. I am actually worried about nerfs in the future. Capped defense by level 25 (with perhaps the least amount of actual IO investment in terms of number of IO's needed), an inherent 15% recharge with enough mobs, a great heal and endurance management? Crazy good with anything and everything. It even has a little bit of resistance and a fairly decent s/l resist number.

Someone mentioned elec/EA and that might be real nice for the AOE too.

It wont be long before this armor becomes a top contender for top 3 when people see how it has changed.

I would think electric melee could work too, its got a lot of aoe. Might be expensive to get the recharge up high enough though.

I made a claws/EA brute with the thought that the fast recharge time on spin would help overcome the lack of a damaging aura. Also the defense powers for LoTG recharges and large Patron/Epic/Incarnate aoe powers should fill in the wholes late game or at least thats my theory.

Energy cloak really reduces aggro to the point it really hurts fury generation once you get into the late 30s and could actually withstand the step up in damage/attacks, I am really excited for the changes to come through. Also I find myself suprisingly using conserve energy alot, definitely get enough slots into energy drain before the changes go through to help with leveling.

I considered stone melee too, but the lack of aoe scared me off. I was trying to see if you could proc it up some to up the damage but if you can handle the lack of aoe this would be a real fun and synergetic combo.

I ran one up to 17ish and a scrapper up to 17ish as well and listened to the number crunchers and kept the scrapper and now wished I hadn't.

The big advantage scrappers get is that the final power instantly recharges power siphon at some percentage in place of a crit. That and the higher damage buff values of power siphon on scrapper convinced me to go scrapper.

But /fire armor is just so much better on brutes, you get to the fire resistance cap with temperature protection (on scraps this is essentially a wasted power in the powerset since you cap at 75%). Also the taunt effect brutes get is huge for keeping mobs in burn's radius.

I think the playstyle would have been more fun on a brute even if not optimized numerically. Your taunt effect on blazing aura keeps mobs in range of burn, use the smaller quick attacks to keep power siphon maxed along with fury and throw down the aoe burst (? forgot name) and burn as quick as possible.

Scrappers get such big numbers from crits its the opposite playstyle, you want to throw your big attacks as often as possible which actually hurts keeping power siphon at max as your bigger attacks have longer animations. It feels like the sets are fighting each other to get maximum production on my scrapper and I get the feeling even with the lower damage modifier on brutes I would be happier with the combo on brutes.

I did NOT play the brute past 17 so I could be completely wrong.

You know you don't have to follow the herd, especially if you like the brute playstyle and the look and feel of the toon. Why change?

Your buff numbers would be higher on a scrapper but I think it will do just fine on a brute. Who knows IO'ed out you might discover there is something to the brute that makes it superior.

Off the top of my head, high hitpoints, and more team friendly for buffs since your resistantce caps are so much higher might make the difference. Especially since you get a hitpoint buff power, add in some regen bonuses and it might be suprisingly good on a brute.

You could run some AE mishes and make ticket rolls at level 35 bronze and silver to get your kinetic combat recipes. 1 drops on the 35 bronze, 3 on the silver and the gold drops the three piece one. I would be suprised if there was not an energy resistance based farm since ELA on brutes is one of 2 sets that lets you cap resistance to a specific damage type. It just wont be as well known or talked about as fire farms.

I find it hilarious myself to slot the knockdown proc in those sets, its a bit of a pain on ss since it will periodically knock them away from you instead of knockdown but it is a cheaper way to get the s/l bonuses and suprisingly fun in game to smash them across the screen with haymaker or punch.

Just target 32.5% s/l defense then one purple gets you capped. Look at the incarnates for getting so defense debuff resistance too.

My first thought is remember EA is a typed defense set and has fairly high values. One of the neat things it can do is cap to s/l/e/fire/col defense by level 25 with use of 2 sets of 4 pcs kinetic combats, 2 sets of 3pcs eradications, and 2 sets of 4pcs of Aegis(?I think) and taking weave and energy cloak. That is pretty impressive for a very few slots.

Not an expert on builds but I think you overslotted Spin with Eradication, that IO group caps at 30 your losing some acc/dam/recharge in the best claws power (on brutes) by putting in the full set. I would put in 3 eradicates and frankenslot the rest, this power is awesome on brutes. I like Eradications for the IO bonus to energy defense in only 3 io's, 2 groups of 3pcs, one in spin and one in eviscerate caps you to energy/neg energy defense.

It looks like you might be over on s/l defense, I don't have mids so can't be sure. I went the route of kinetic combats in place of obliterations. If you pick up the knockdown IO in the set it is much cheaper and gets you the s/l 3.75% def in 4 IO's vs 6 in obliteration.

I can't remember if it is strike or slash, but one of those powers accepts the -res Achilles heal debuff proc, it might be worth considering.

Not sure I would have gone with physical conditioning route on a EA toon, energy drain is awesome. Speaking of energy drain, I don't like the slotting of doctored wounds here. I would slot for recharge and end drain and then throw in a heal with any extra slots. You need recharge maxed and at least 1 and I prefer 2 end mods in here. With this slotting you can re-evaluate needing physical conditioning but I think you will be pleasantly suprised.

Combat jumping looks overslotted to me, I would limit it to the luck of gambler recharge.

Tough if you can stack it with an inherent isn't too bad s/l numbers, I would look at getting that slotted up. The steadfast should go in one of the passives. The passives are supposed to be getting a boost soon too! Too help with gaining those slots I would look a the passives in your build they look overslotted, there is one resistance set (and I want to say Aegis) that gives a 3.75% bonus to fire/cold defense, 2 sets of 4pcs should give you decent resists and cap your fire/cold defense.

I think crushing impacts give a recharge at 5% and most people stop at 5 from this set, but I can't remember the final bonus. But it could save you some slots.

Take a look on the boards for /ea builds there is a really good one that I used as a template. I want to say it was em/ea or dm/ea but the primary doesn't really matter.

Ugh I feel dumb look at the WM/EA thread towards the end (although if you have not read thread its worth it) there are some good EA builds in there. At the very least read the first 5 pages and look for Mr. Plaskool's drawings well worth it.

Quote:
From Post by Recycle Please
[How indeed does one keep ten foes within range of a pbaoe without a taunt aura! A question that has tantalized man throughout the ages. Before brutes existed, it was known to be impossible to damage multiple enemies at once. Rumors persisted, however, of the legendary Spinsquatch, a creature capable of USING NAUGHT BUT ITS MOVEMENT SKILLS to corral plenty of targets to feed its low recharge scrapper AOE's. Some say it still exists... maybe it's right behind you!!!]

Sorry this was too funny, this is exactly my point of why scrappers suffer in damage calculations and you did this to be sarcastic? Time spent chasing or moving to execute a move is affecting your damage output so yes runners are a relatively big deal. Everyone knows you get runners in game its just the way the mob AI works, it is only a moot point if you are specifically talking about farms where who cares if several run away, they will come back and you stay at target cap anyways.

If your argument is pulling, herding or lining them up in corners the argument swings even further in support of brute damage as they do not have to do this the taunt components will pull enemies in. Heavens forbid you take a secondary without a damaging aura and then it would seem to even further favor brute claws.

Again these are MINOR differences in sets and the numbers are close either way. But to think for one second you can come into the brute forums and convince us scrappers are better? Child please! I will SMASH you with strong and pretty!

So either way you cut it Claws are good on both AT's, so pick the AT you prefer and roll with it. Those numbers they are throwing out are ridiculously close in value between both AT's.

That said Brutes are better in pve (unfortunately scrappers are better for pvp the crits tend to give them a bit more burst and they dont have to wait for fury) for a couple reasons and neither is specific to any primary or secondary:

1. Taunt effect on brute attacks keeps the mobs attached to you for quick deaths and few runners. When the mobs take too much damage too quick they tend to run, just the way the AI seems to work. It may not seem like a big deal but on kill all mishes, farms and any time you are concerned with damage per second time spent chasing hurts your damage calculation (not a biggy on primaries with ranged attacks, but focus is not that long a range) but an overlooked component all the math wizards tend to ignore. Most the damage calculations are on pylons which don't run or move which would force you to adjust your spacing or setup.

2. More room to caps on their secondaries. In case you missed it almost every buff in the game that you would want got switched to an aoe/team application in place of individual applications. The higher caps is a dramatic advantage overall, but especially to 2 specific secondaries fire armor and electric armor. Simply because those are the 2 that you can reach 90% resistance to a specific resistance type cap on your own with no outside buffs. Why you would roll either of these on a scrapper and settle for wasting that 15% blows my mind. This is a underated component of why fire farms work so well in game.

Thanks for the heads up, I will run it up to 20 just to see how I like the combo, but I am afraid I might switch to SM/fire for increased aoe and end recovery.

Darn you fire armor why can't I quit you????

I am curious about this combo too, it looks super SMASH.

I am worried about endurance as both sets are a tad end hungry. Any experience? Is stone melee a no no without an endurance recovery power or super expensive IO's?

Also the one handed animations...what does hurl boulder look like with shield?

Any other secondary recommendations for a stone/??? brute?

One vote for dark/traps. The tohitdebuff on all the blasts in combination with Force Field is awesome. I really enjoyed this combo. The color tintable dark blast looks great and feels extremely magical. The damage is less than stellar though, fire is much better and looks awesome too. You can't go wrong with either combo.

Mine is an alchemist, magic with mystical traps! I'm just saying great minds think alike.

Love the animations on the peace bringers they are among the best in the game and all in one set. Hate how the set plays, I never make it past late 20s before deleting them. I like the plethora of options but find they lack follow through/power. It is just such a let down to come flying into melee, transform, unload some incredible melee attacks and not kill a Lt and be forced to run/heal/turtle/scatter/pillpop.

The rage clone is a good idea, but if you do that and put knockdown in solar flare making those the defining properties of the set, why wouldn't I just play my Super strength characters? The set needs a change that keeps its unique flavor while raising their baseline performance which is just awful currently.

Just a guess but I would suspect a lot of the objection to changing the current PB powers is they do have a unique look and feel to them in the game. How to sustain that and increase the baseline performance is the question.


Crazy Idea Time: (NOT all of the following)

1. Global Power section-a group of core powers that are useful in all forms. Wouldn't this be doable, somewhat akin to the Incarnate Powers? This would require juggling and probably developing new powers or the squid form would get too powerful. Simply importing the heals, buildup, conserve power would appear to skew too strongly to the squid form. Also SOA have that odd power tree organization wouldnt something similar work in Peacebringers?

a. Also you could make all the powers knockdown and add like a global power to amplify secondary effects (power boost maybe???). This would let you turn knockdown into knockback with the click of a button. Not sure it currently works this way though.

b. The swap ammo power might be a better way to do this, brilliant thought Evil Gecko. Energy channeling-stuns to all powers, Might-knockback, Energy drain-debuffs to all powers (Would avoid increase in damage, that would be the responsibility of the buildup power or change if any)


2. I love the shields look but being resistance with no status protection is useless, so keep animations and make defense or switch them to passives (lower values) and let the passives carry over into forms.

What do you guys think? Too much magic herb on a saturday morning?

Different experiences in game then. I get that you are gung ho on /kin but are you really trying to devalue sleet????

I don't know how you could possibly be underestimating sleet this badly, have you ever used it? It is game breakingly powerful. If I was a controller I would be seriously mad an offensive class gets this power. It might be the best control power in the game. This single power lets an IO'ed /cold become the controller and tanker for a team, and we already do low level blaster level damage, along with decent buffs.

The other thing that has not been said is how clicky kin is, it is one of those powersets my hands are tired after a couple of hours play. Maybe the new speed boost buff helps reduce that but it is still an extremely active secondary.

If you want something to do every single second of a fight, kin is for you and it is a great set. But cold is a more versatile well rounded set in my humble opinion (INMHO refresher for those that hate acronyms like me).

Artic fog has fairly significant resistance, a place to pop a knockback enhancer and a building point for defense (not great but every little bit helps).

Sleet is an awesome opener and if its a tough spawn, sleet+heatloss melts it with stacked -res. Snowstorm isnt great but yet another source of mitigation.

Troublesome mob just add benumb and win.

The shields are by far more mitigation for the rest of the team, but not yourself.

Kin is awesome but a melee range heal, end drain and some damage debuff is your defensive tactic. Maybe I am missing something but cold just has way more mitigation tools than kin. My impression from my mind/kin controller is the set plays just like a blaster kill them before they kill you. Isn't that the definition of a glass cannon?

I will chime in for Fire/Cold.

It will do almost as much damage as /kin and let you still take on AV/GM's solo due to debuffs and a lot of IO's. It's also not bad in pvp. Just a little bit more well rounded than Fire/kin. I dont have a fire/kin and never played one, it looks like a glass cannon to me and if thats the case why not roll a blaster?

Melee toons love kins, everyone loves colds and no one realizes what dark can do everything just starts dying and we are not getting hit.

Fire/dark can dish out some serious damage with even more utility than fire/cold. I have also hear and can imagine /dark is pretty decent in pvp if thats your thing.

Some real nice utility in the /dark set that said I find the set oddly static (dark pits timer is too long and that seems to be the core of your damage increase) . It feels like traps to me, I can kick *** were ever I setup but once I get out of my little area my advantage goes away. Cold suprisingly enough does not feel this way with infrigidate, benumb, snowstorm. Sleet is on such a fast timer you always have that juicy -res available.

Ok thanks for the heads up. Higher base hitpoints, now that makes sense thanks for the knowledge.

I think I will make due with Hoarfrost, drain psyche and go nuts building for s/l defense and recharge.

Thanks for the help all.