Deacon_NA

I'm almost done watching these. Good stuff. In one of them, Hogun rides in some sort of chariot with Hulk. I'm just wondering if that was an intentional pun (Hulk - Hogun).

The meeting briefing, as I see it, for the Freymouth mission, is

"Whoo hoo! You just hit the jackpot with the quickest tip mission. Run to boss (downgraded to lt.) defeat him and the guy beside him. Next!"

Well, Tar Patch is awesome regardless of primary. The -Res debuff makes the Thugs do more damage, just like any other henchmen would.

To the question of powers to avoid from Thugs, I'd say it boils down to if you want to have attacks or not, which is entirely up to you. I've seen MMs on these forums vehemently say "NO, MMs should NOT take personal attacks." I say "whatevah". I've never taken attacks from Thugs, but not because of some fundamental "MM's don't attack" philosophy, rather they just didn't fit in to the build.

I don't think you'll see any complaints from Thugs MMs. Quite the opposite, I'd say among MM enthusiasts that Thugs is regarded as a candidate for top MM set, comparable to Robots and perhaps Demons. They're definitely much superior to Mercs.

To go over enumerated questions:

1) Mercs are not so underperforming. By that I mean, you can make a Merc/Dark and handle any content 1-50. Merc/Dark will take longer to get through a mission than Thugs/Dark, but it will get the job done.

2) Thugs are absolutely worth it. The pets are well behaved with one notable exception (Arsonist). Tons of aoes with some fire damage thrown in.

3) Gang War has base recharge of 600 seconds so you can easily get it to 300 seconds, if that's a priority for you. As for secondaries, I think they both are well served by secondaries that help them survive, since they don't have much for self-maintainability (like bots or demons). So Thermal, Traps, FF, Pain Dom. Still, anything will work.

I'm able to review it in Mids now, so here's a few thoughts:

Your global Accuracy + Kismet IO make it so that your final to-hit is capped at 95% against +3 for Sonic Siphon with only one Accuracy IO. You can take an Accuracy out to something else you'd rather slot.

In Tough, you would still be hard capped to s/l by swapping a basic Endurance Reduction IO instead of the End/Res you have in there. Alternatively, a Steadfast Protection End/Res would buff your HP a bit.

You've exceeded the limit of 2.5% recovery bonuses. I'd take out one of the dual aspect Performance Shifter IOs. Either move the slot elsewhere or use a basic End Mod IO.

Though it's tempting to swap out the Lockdowns in Liquefy for Cloud Senses, to get the recharge bonus, doing so presents a conundrum of sorts. A Sonic/Sonic doesn't need much for global recharge, since the only power that really benefits is Liquefy. If I substitude Cloud Senses to improve global recharge, the enhancement recharge for Liquefy goes down. The end result is a 10 second loss in recharge by switching to the higher recharge bonuses. I have Cloud Senses slotted in my Son/Son, but I see a strong point for Lockdown too.

Here's what it looks like with these changes, plus the one I had above about the Posi proc.

I just pulled the trigger too. I was cheap though and went with free shipping so I've got a few days to wait.

I'll give a good look-over when I get to computer with Mids (not this one).

Off-hand, I'd say go ahead and put the Posi proc in Howl to get your recharge bonus. Yes, I certainly understand the benefits of range in Howl, it's just if you're 4 deep into Posi, might as well get the big prize at the 5th slot.

I like Cardiac for my Son/Son - Endurance, Resists, Range. All attributes I want to enhance.

RED ALERT - You MUST, MUST take that kb enhancement out of Foot Stomp. FS does knock down, if you add kb enhancments, you will knock foes away, which will diminish your defense dramatically, by having foes out of Invincibility range.

Edit to add - I just noticed you mentioned some of the slotting had IOs in mind, so the feedback below may be irrelevant. (end edit)

OP, you should look at the numbers and Mids and decide what that gets you. For example, your current slotting of 4 resist enhancers gives you 15.9% resists to energy/neg energy. If I take one out, that becomes 15.6%. That's a whole dedicated to .3% resistance, a terrible "value". Going with 2 gives you 14%, 1 is 12%. It's practically inconceivable that there would be a scenario where one would say "I would have survived that encounter if I had 31.8% resists instead of 27.9" (numbers including Unyielding).

Likewise with the 4 Defense enh in Invincibilty and Tough Hide.

Tough is a toggle and absolutely needs an Endurance Reduction in it. I'd go 1 End Red, 1 Resist.

Super Jump is way overslotted. 1 Jump enh is quite sufficient.

Personally, for an SO build, I'd go 3 SOs in RPD, 1 each in Resist Elements and Resist Energies.

If you're doing tip and morality missions, that means you're earning A-merits. Cashing in 2 merits for say, a Miracle +Rec IO that you sell on the market will fund an entire frankenslotting build. Such a build would be dramatically better for you than this SO build.

See here for an explanation of frankenslotting: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Frankenslotting

Even minor frankenslotting will make things better. For example, whenever you have a 3rd type of enhancement in a power, such as damage, use a dmg/endurance IO in its place. You get pretty much the same damage but a non-trivial amount of endurance savings. Same with Invincibility, instead of 3 def and an endurance, 2 def, 1 end/def and 1 end.

I see a lot of "Real Tanks don't use stealth" expressed in this thread. I say, what else would one put in Sprint? The tfs I tend to be on are the speedy kind. That means everybody's speedy. Yes, with my invul Tank I can run through pretty much any mobs. Or, I can turn off Invincibilty, turn on the stealth io and not draw any aggro whatsoever. That's not for my benefit, it's for teammates. One thing I HATE when stealthing on a squishy is the macho tank that gets aoes shot at him that then expose me from an invis state when I get hit by some of that aoe damage.

I wouldn't underrate the Seeker debuffs. 26.6% for defs and the 2 drones can stack the debuff on one target. So you're talking about a 53% -dmg debuff for a Def vs 40% for a Corr.

I'm at my home computer now so I can see which channels I get.

It's "Infinity Badges 2.0"

Other corrections are that it's JFA2010, there is no JFA2011, but there is a VU2011 (and VU2010).

You can gift these temp powers to your sturdier league mates.

Something to consider...

Just for formality and completeness:

Including Aim, without slotting to-hit buff enhancements in it, gets Benumb to 93%.

35% global Acc on top of that gets it to the to-hit cap of 95%.

Let's look at a very real scenario of "when Benumb MUST hit", fighting a +3 AV (you at 50+1, AV at 54).

Base to-hit is .48. So if you fire off Benumb with no buffs/debuffs on the AV and no buffs/debuffs on you, Benumb will hit less than half the time.

Let's hit him with Sleet, a 30% Def debuff. Level modifier is .65, AV resistance is .87.

So that debuff becomes .3 * .65 * (1-.87)... a whopping 2.5% debuff.

Let's add it in anyway, so you're now at .48 + .025 = .505. Hey, at least now you'll hit more than half the time.

Ah, but how about that global Accuracy of, oh, 35%. Now we're at .505 * (1 + .35) = .682. Now you're hitting a little more than 2/3 of the time. Not good enough.

Add a lvl 50 Accuracy IO, with enh value of 42.4% and we've got .505 * (1 + .35 + .424) = .90. Getting there. Getting from .9 to .95 can be done a number of different ways, such as slotting a Kismet unique IO, more global accuracy, a 2nd accuracy in Benumb, Tactics, Focused Accuracy and I'm sure there are others.

So yeah, you can reliably hit that level 50 Cimeroran Boss or EB with no Accuracy in Benumb. That's not when Benumb must hit. Fighting Lord Recluse, or Battle Maiden, et al, that's when it must hit and slotting no Accuracy simply won't get it done reliably.

Inf Badge Seeker is at ver 2.0 now, so look for "Inf Badge Seeker 2.0". "Infinity tfs" is another. I think I have 3 or 4 Infinity channels and I think they're a pretty good source for teams.

I can't check my chat channel list now, but Justice has "JFA2010" (maybe JFA2011 as well now). "Justice United" is pretty active.

I think Virtue has a "Virtue United". Actually I think the name is "VU2010" with a "VU2011" now too.

Off the top of my head, foes that hit you with -resists include:

Longbow Nullifiers. If you're a vill, you'll see a lot of these. They now exist hero-side in some tip missions. Each one in a spawn will fire the Disruption grenade, so this adds up fast and is quite dangerous. Fortunately, there's an easy countermeasure - move. These debuffs are just location based fields.

All Wailers. Fighting these guys taught me a valuable lesson about the effectiveness of -resist debuffs. You get hit by one of their Sonic attacks and you think "oh that sort of tickled, didn't do much to my hp though. After a couple more hit you say "whoa, how'd my health get into the yellow so fast"? Shortly after that you get to select whether to rez in the hospital or your base. Please note - I'm not saying these guys are difficult, I'm just saying they can take you from green to dead very quickly if they get to stack enough sonic attacks.

Goldbrickers. Same as Wailers really. Except bosses seem to have SS, so while minions and lts hit you with Sonic, the boss gets to pack a mean punch.

CoT Frost Demons have Sleet.

Seers can be added to the list. Surveillance sucks if you're not the one using it.

It is a pretty amazing disparity between blue and red side for this.

A giant bot for "The Family" would be cool. He could go to the enhancement stores and say "That's a mighty nice store you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it. Like a giant robot attack. Giant robot attacks happen, you know? Would be a shame, I'm just sayin'."

A giant Carnies fetish bot would spice up the higher level zones.

If it was mentioned already, I missed it, but don't forget the giant Arachnos spider bot - Jade Spider.

I took the Fire epic to go with my Earth/Fire Dom. Basically he's a fire blaster without the danger and debt. For even more safety, you can drop a control, quicksand and Rain of Fire from behind a corner before the enemies can see you.

Miscellaneous thoughts...

For Benumb, you'll notice if you take out the 3rd recharge IO, you save a whole .75 seconds in recharge (30.25 to 31). I'd definitely make one of those slots an Accuracy.

Winter's Gift unique in SS will stack the resists to slow and -rch with those same resists in Arctic Fog. You run across caltrop patches as if you had speed boost.

Taking out the 3rd recharge in Hasten increases its recharge from 113.5 seconds to 116.6. In other words, it's doing nothing for you since it doesn't stack for those 3 seconds.

Here's a playstyle thing - the nuke and Heat Loss have the same recharge. Personally, I find Sleet> ROF> Inferno > HL one of the most satisfying sequences in the game, surpassed only by Fulcrum Shift> ROF > Inferno > Transference. Some people don't like toggle dropping and if that's you, so be it. I play this combo just so I can do that.

I do want to ditto the feedback that Snow Storm was way overslotted. I'll add that Infridgidate is improperly slotted. It has a to-hit check and when you want it to stick, you REALLY want it to stick. Two of Analyze Weakness, that increase your accuracy, are what I'd go for.

I'll also agree that HL needs accuracy.

Last thing - 4 Kinetic Combats in Boxing will get you capped to s/l and not really harm your global recharge as much as you might think. 2-slotted Hasten is still perma (barely) with that change.

Wow, my mouse pointer is hovering over the "Add to Cart" button (well, not literally at this moment as I type this).

This collection has some of the finest comics ever and the Simonson Thor run is what got me back into comics. Whether I buy this right now or not, I have no doubt this will find its way on my bookshelf soon after release.

I've only taken a quick look, but one thing stood to me during that glance - this is a stunningly expensive build for a new player. I don't know if you've priced these enhancements or not. Perhaps you're a savvy marketeer, that's quite plausable too. The 3 pvp uniques combine to cost more than what I'd invest in total in a Robot/FF. I say that because I don't think the performance gain from a 15B robot/FF would be markedly different than 1-2B robot/FF.

Anyway, this post isn't to question whether or not you have the funds, it's just in case, as a new player, you chose those from Mids without knowing what you were getting into, cost wise.