DrGamma

The only time I don't use RI is if I'm in a team where foes are getting slaughtered almost before it finishes animating - I prefer to help slaughter them faster and, at this point, the great mitigation isn't needed. Solo, I almost always use it, unless the group I'm fighting is too wimpy (usually won't happen, since I can crank up the dif) or I'm just dealing with a straggler or two. Later, if you manage to get lots of defense, RI might be less vital to your survival. Before that, it means a ton of mitigation.

ALWAYS use EF, in teams or solo. It animates fast and will increase damage considerably.

Try to stick in melee range of the mob (or at least hovering just above melee range if it's a group with dangerous melee - especially melee mezzers) so they stays clumped close to you (and your anchor) and well inside your debuffs, it helps a lot, and will help your irradiate too (and later your Dark Mastery goodies, if you go that route). If it's one of those mobs where half prefers to rush you and half prefers to stay at range, either close in on them yourself before they spread or, if they insist on staying spread around, pull with RI and get behind a corner so they have to come to you and clump nice and tight.

LR can help keep things inside your debuffs and/or away from you - especially if you have to retreat - but usually you can skip on using it unless you're fighting EBs/AVs.

You'll eventually get EM Pulse which will be a great panic button. One of the best controls in the game.

Endurance shouldn't be much of a problem while AM is up unless you're using choking cloud (is it? Did you slot your AM for rech and end mod? Are you taking advantage of inherent stamina and have you 3-slotted stamina?)... At least it never was for me even when running all Rad toggles except Choking, plus maneuvers, assault and hover and attacking like crazy. Choking cloud is a monstrous end-hog and I never found it adding that much to my survivability (everybody's to-hit was floored by RI anyway and whatever landed has -dam on top, even my tiny heal can usually handle it) - so I went with OG instead to stack with CB's stun on bosses and never looked back. I eventually picked Dark's endurance refilling power, too, for the seconds while AM is down, or for right after using EMP.

Doing that, you should be able to solo pretty well. You'll have decent AoE in Irradiate+Neutron, boosted by Aim whenever it's up (and later ridiculously boosted by Soul Drain most of the time), enemies with nearly floored to-hit (RI for a corr should do about -39% when well slotted, you only need 6% def to be at the softcap) and some -dam, CB doing good ST dam AND a Lt-level stun (which later you can turn into an insta boss stun with OG), and even a small self-heal to keep your health topped-up between fights.

Your second biggest problem will be getting mezzed. You have no innate protection against it (aside from the -to-hit which does help, but never stops that last 5% chance) and it will not only paralyze you, but drop your offensive toggles (RI, EF, later OG) where most of your mitigation AND help with offense reside. Getting mezzed for a rad is a lot more deadly than, say, for a dark, since once FS and TP are down, mobs will stay crippled even while you're mezzed...

So learn to find the mezzers and mez and kill them first (never use them as the anchor) and avoid being in melee with mobs with multiple melee-mezzers (malta springs to mind in the late game, freaks earlier). Carry lots of break-frees, make them from other insps during play and, if you see a mob with multiple mezzers that are likely to hit you, use them proactively instead of reactively, because before you get EMP as a panic button, having your RI/EF drop in the middle of a largeish mob carries a high risk of faceplanting. After you have EMP using BFs reactively is less of a pain. If you ever resub and go incarnate, getting Clarion will make you feel godly.

But your biggest problem will be soloing AVs/EBs who almost completely ignore your tasty to-hit debuff (and usually mez you quick, too). When fighting them, always carry purples and keep your defense soft-capped with them (and definitely use a break-free or two proactively as well). Thankfully, there's usually only one or two of those per mission (and not in most missions), and usually not together, so relying on insps isn't a deal breaker.

My Rad/Rad def got to 40-something before IOs were in the game playing exclusively solo and did fine. Nowadays with Clarion he's very tough (been soloing the SSA at +2x4 to take it easy - he has the 1 level-shift from alpha to help - and I hardly ever need to use insps or my self-heal).

And with Reactive, he melts mobs very quick. Now and again I take him to a +2x8 BM farm just to remind myself that he can do it. He's not the fastest farmer due to all the time it takes to set-up RI, but after that, one application of Aim+SD+Irradiate+NB melts all minions and LTs in a big mob, and leaves the bosses in pretty bad shape to finish off with CB and my other ST attacks (or a second AoE volley if there are more than 2). Even before Reactive he did some hefty AoE damage, it's just quicker/more impressive now.

- Invulnerability, well built to softcap S/L/N/E with one enemy in Invincibility, is the most durable armor IMO - except when you face lots of Psi damage (which abounds in the late game).

- Electric has pretty good resists (capped versus energy, close versus S/L with tough, good versus Psi, only hole is toxic - and that's plugged by the godmode if you decide to take it - and a bit lower resist versus negative, but not much), a good heal, nearly infinite endurance AND enemy sapping for extra and very good mitigation, a pretty good damage aura (which also saps) to help with AoE... You're also practically immune to being sapped!

It's a great set, but has no source of +HP like Inv does, and no defenses to build upon.

To feel even more unkillable, you'll still want to try to build for as much defense as you can get even if you don't make the cap (using CJ+Weave+maybe maneuvers even, plus IO sets). Getting to 32.5 means you're one small purple from the non-incarnate softcap and helps a lot.

Out of your choices for primaries, you might also want to take TW with Elec and actually use Defensive sweep to boost defense even more when needed, if getting close to the cap proves difficult. TW is a beast of a set and meshes very well with ElA (TW tends to hog end, and ElA gives it as much as it wants).

- Dark will have resists to every single damage type, including about 60% versus psi, over 50% versus S/L (with tough) and 40-45% versus F/C/N. Energy and Toxic will be sort of holes, with only around 25% resist, and energy is very common in the current incarnate trials... But that's kinda easy to plug with defenses.

You do get a bit of defense to build upon in Cloak of Darkness, plus -to-hit in Cloak of Fear (not to mention its control, on top of OG), so it's easier to get closer to the cap than it is with ElA.

Besides all the resists, defense you can build up and AoE control, you ALSO get a damage Aura and a MONSTER and quick heal if you have enemies around you. You even get pretty good resistance to end drain and even decent fear protection (which is being used more and more in high level content).

Dark is an end hog too, though, so it will require some smart (possibly expensive) slotting to counter that (especially if you decide to pair it with TW). But it's well worth it, it's up there with the toughest armors IMO and has no holes.

- Willpower will have 30-something resist to S/L/Psi and you can add tough on top of the SL, some defenses to help you get to the softcap and monstrous regen if you're surrounded. It also helps your end bar recover faster and offers protection versus both fear AND confuse (both can be a pain in the trials - not usually enough to kill you, just very annoying). WP has a god mode that you actually want to use all the time, with no real crash, but it's impossible to make it recharge faster (at least you save slots and don't need to build for recharge so much). My only problem with WP is that, when things are going south, clicking on the godmode is ALL you can do... If it's recharging and things look bad, all you got to shore up your defenses are insps and maybe destiny when you get it...

- Shield is quite easy to softcap and go beyond, offers resists to everything but psi (but only around 20% - including tough for S/L), debuffs enemy damage in AAO, adds a great damage buff and has a godmode with nearly no crash which will add considerably to your resists, +maxHP and even recovery. Like WP, you'll also feel torn between using it a lot saving it for when you really need it (land you can't make it recharge faster either). You lack a self-heal and will sometimes miss it, so it's common to take Aid Self (which isn't so bad when you have high def).

Any of these 5 armors should let you build a very tough brute with multiple layers of mitigation that can tank the end game well. All 3 of your choices for primary are great and will let you put out a ton of damage, both ST and AoE. Just pick whatever you want (I'd pick SS to pair with Inv or Dark, TW with Elec or WP and Mace with Shield, but that's just me). TW/Elec was a ton of fun for me (though I went Tanker), even from the early levels. SS/Inv is a classic and WM/Shield is very good tematic fit. Tough choice.

To the OP: My Claws/Regen Scrapper does quite well having nearly no defense and some extra recharge as long as I'm on top of my game (which includes abusing the KB/KD from Claws). I'd rather have built her for considerably more defense, though, so she could do as well or better even when I'm NOT on top of my game as much, but when I made that build I wasn't so good at it and I don't play her enough nor is she so bad as is to bother with respec-ing...

Having the same problem with the combat attributes monitor window. Attributes are missing from it in some characters, some attributes I wasn't monitoring show up instead, blank lines (undeletable) are also showing up...

My power trays have been consistently moved up as well, for every character I logged in with after today's patch. And a few other windows are showing up at the wrong places.

I'm not 100% sure of my schedule on the 24th, but I'd love to be there and I most likely will be able to. I'll bring along my tri-form shade, Darkpyre (he only has a mediocre IO build, but does quite fine and is +3). Global is @Dr.Gamma

Hey, sorry for arriving late to this party. But I, too, have an EM brute that's sitting there waiting for the set to be "looked at", so I was curious about the mention of changes in I22.

I remembered one of the devs saying EM is one set they would make some changes to if they could, from some interview where several devs answered that question, but that didn't sound definite to me. Well, the I22 page in the wiki does mention the source of their info, a coffee talk: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=279666

It says:

Energy Melee?
Hawk: "We are looking at it. It's too early to talk about details. Somewhere down the line we'll come up with something cool to do it."

So, maybe not as soon as I22 release, but it sounds more definite than one guy among a bunch saying that maybe EM is a set he would like to look at...

As for the suggestions in this thread, most seem really nice. I specially like increasing the range in WH and adding splash damage in TF to help AoE, and maybe giving stun the Clobber/Cobra Strike treatment. If TF was seen as an alternative AoE power the set wouldn't feel so slow even with ET unchanged (having one slow power in your ST attack chain instead of two is really great, and AoE powers are usually forgiven longer animations), Stun could be used to bring up the ST-chain damage, AoE would get better.

But I'm actually curious to see what the devs will eventually come up with. Despite some outliers and some time limitations, I think our devs are pretty good about balancing things, in general.

I played both my Fire/Fire tank to about level 35 and my Spines/Dark scrapper to 50 without any defense from IOs (I did grab CJ and Tough/Weave for both of them, just because they're good powers) and they did fine solo (my scrapper even tanked ITFs and LGTFs without slotting for defense, but I had decent support). Adding a bit of defense to their builds, though (not a ton, I didn't even try for the softcap) made them feel even tougher, to the point of sillyness. So, the resist sets are viable without defense, but adding a bit of defense without worrying too much about chasing it will make them even better.

I'm currently playing a ElA/TW tank that really doesn't really need the defense, ElA feels pretty unkillable already... but I'm adding some defense anyway (and with Defensive Sweep, melee and smashing are easy to take to the softcap and above for extra toughness if needed - but I hardly ever remember to use it because it's not needed for most stuff).

Silas has the most up-to-date TA guide I've seen (maybe I missed some): http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...50#post2354750 - it's quite informative and fun.

But you really should check out Luminara's guides to TA and Archery, even if they are somewhat outdated now:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122243
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122244
These should give good general ideas about the sets, even if details might have changed (there's been a slow but ongoing trickle of changes to TA for a while).

My qualitative impressions about Archery, from enjoying it in-game:

- Secondary effect: None. This is one of the bad things about TA, it does no extra damage/slows/-res/-def/-to-hit or what have you like many blast sets do. It trades them for having higher base accuracy (which, IMHO, is pretty much useless most of the time).

- Single-target damage: The bad part is it's almost entirely lethal. The good part is... Blazing Arrow! It's a hard-hitter with the same range your other ST attacks have (80) and it does almost as much damage as a snipe, animating MUCH faster (it still manages to feel slow sometimes, in fast paced teams, but it's worth it). And there's fire damage there. The tier 1 and 2 blasts on defenders and corruptors are very underwhelming, doing considerably less damage than their equivalents in other sets. Blasters don't have that problem, however, thanks to the tier 1 and 2 normalization after Defiance 2.0.

- AoE damage: Great. This is why most people play Archery. Fistful is an ok attack (but with short range), Explosive Arrow is good AoE if you know how to handle KB, but of course the gem is RoA, a mini-nuke for nearly every enemy group. And at level 32, the wait isn't as bad (defenders have it worse, at 38). It still makes Archery a late-blooming set, but not TOO late.

Out of your two options (Archery/Energy blaster or A/TA corr), I'd go blaster for a few reasons: good synergy with the stuns and extra range, the lack of secondary effect isn't as bad for blasters since their modifiers would be lower anyway, tier 1 and 2 blasts are much better.

The corruptor would be pretty good too: you'd add the amazing mitigation and damage of OSA to you AoE carnage (build for recharge!), plus a couple nice res debuffs that help you AND the whole team or league (that's where the corr is better than the blaster), plus nice control from EMP and a smattering of other debuffs spread around the arrows. Flash Arrow's -to-hit looks like a joke compared to other debuff sets, until you remember it's irresistible, so it will help you against an AV just as much as against a minion (fine, if you have no defense that help is hardly noticeable, but get your ranged defense to 20-30%, like everybody seems to try to do nowadays, and it really will make a difference).

TA is VERY late-blooming though. If you were spoiled by debuff sets like rad or dark that get great powers very early on, you might loose your patience with TA before you get to the good part. Especially in a pairing with archery, which is ALSO late blooming. A/TA can do some amazing stuff, but it requires patience to get there.

All of the above is great advice (hover blasting+ranged defense+stealth will REALLY help). Also (not sure if anybody mentioned it before) don't forget to grab, slot and love your epic resistance shield as soon as you can. The resistance values for defenders are great in those shields and they do make a difference. The epic pools also add some additional control to what you already have (and use, I hope) which can help you even more in shutting down whoever is going after you...

Someone with lots of mitigation. Buffs/debuffs to potentialize your blaster friend's crazy damage are nice, too. Added AoE damage is always nice since BR is not stellar in that area. Keeping enemies clumped together to help disintegration spread would be nice, too.

With that in mind, I figure you have a few choices:

- Some melee person can add: the mitigation (in the form of tanking), which also keeps things clumped together for the spread, and they can add AoE depending on AT and powerset.
Tankers are still best in the keeping them clumped and aggroed on you, Brutes are ok at that and do more damage and you could probably do the tanking with a Scrapper or maybe even a Stalker if you pick an AoE heavy set and know your Tao of tanking, but blasters are pretty good at pulling aggro away from people...
Titan Weapons, Super Strength, War Mace (or Battle Axe), Fiery Melee or Electric Melee are all sets with nice AoE (there are probably others, these just immediatelly came to mind). Shield, Electric, Fire, Dark and Ice are all pretty good armors which also help offensively.

- Controllers can add: controls which are almost fool-proof mitigation, AND help with the clumping, pets for those hard-to-control targets and extra damage, and buffs/debuffs. Later, with AoE containment and an AoE from an epic set, they can add AoE damage too.
Plant is probably my favorite control set with good mitigation, a pet and lots of AoE. I also really like Kinetics on controllers, but most sets with at least some offensive debuff should be good, and if your friend intends to hover-blast away from melee, kin doesn't look so nice anymore. If the blaster intends to mix it up in melee blapping occasionally (which should be safe if everything is controlled), you both will love seeing him at the damage cap after a nice fulcrum.

- Masterminds add: mitigation with the pets, buffs/debuffs and AoE damage (though the pets aren't that great early on). They're usually not so great at keeping things clumped together, though, and some MMs develop the tendency to take more care of their pets (which can be quite important, actually) than of their team, so you have to watch for that.
Bots, Thugs and Demons are most people's favorite pets and most buff/debuff sets should work fine.

I'm sure there are many other picks available that would mesh well with your BR/EM, all have their pros and cons, and the real answer kinda depends on whether he wants to hover-blast or to blap more, but these are the options that came quickly to mind. Just pick whatever you like best and what you think you can play well.

(In fact, it's kinda hard to make a duo in CoH that isn't fun and effective... I often just throw totally random characters together in teams with one or two friends, and sometimes we think the duo or trio never will work, than we're surprised later because of how great things went...)

I wouldn't go tanker simply because of Combustion... I love my fire tankers, but combustion isn't the reason for it (I do prefer Cremate, especially when I can skip Scorch-without-bruising).

On my Fire/Fire Tanker I never found Combustion that great, mostly because it's one of those powers that take forever to animate to do a little bit more damage than scorch does (and without the bruising)... It animates in 3 seconds and only does around 58 unenhanced damage over 7 more seconds at level 50 (scorch does around 48, fire sword - the small version - does 73, FSC does 83)...

It felt very underwhelming and I ended up respec-ing out of it after feeling I had better things to do with my 3 seconds, even if it was landing big ST attacks on a boss. Then again, with Fire Armor I had FE, Burn and the damage aura to spoil me and things were melting in AoE anyway...

For my Fire/SD Scrapper (who wouldn't have combustion anyway) I picked up epic Fireball and I found it MUCH superior to Combustion* even for tankers, so if I had to choose between both I'd definitely go for Fireball. Of course, if you dont mind the long animation so much and plan to grab and use both, plus FSC, I guess more AoE is always good, but for me that's no reason to justify picking a tanker over a brute or scrapper (the greater survivability and taunting would be the reasons one should pick the tanker, I guess).



*On a tanker, FB does around 51 damage in a 1s animation, opposed to combustions 58 in 3s. About 60% of Combustion's damage is DoT over a long 7s (starting AFTER the long animation, I think), while FB is mostly frontloaded. FB hits 16 targets, instead of Combustion's 10. You can fire FB from range (I really love doing the FB taunt!). The only bad things about FB are that you can only pick it up at 44 at the soonest, the longer recharge time and maybe the fact that a bit of it's damage is smashing...

Both are pretty great, but for most content I like EA better:
- I prefer the clicky heal and end sapping over the passive extra regen/recovery,
- prefer softcapping defs with less effort,
- like the end drain and slow resists and the extra energy and toxic resists,
- +recharge is always good, as is slowing enemies, and EA's survivability is not as heavily affected by how many foes are in your aura as WP's is,
- and I like being able to have full stealth without the stealth pool or SS.

But against Psi damage (which abounds everywhere, it seems), EA sucks and WP is great. WP's godmode is also crashless and has a fixed recharge time, so it's great with a single extra slot and gets a lot more use from me than EA's godmode (although I admit the crash isn't so bad when you can refill your end bar often, but I still dislike it).

I guess if you prefer having a bit more control over your armor's survivability with active healing/sapping (more active than activating WP's godmode if it's up) and if you don't mind the psi hole so much, go EA, I personally think it's more fun. But if you prefer a mostly toggle-and-forget armor and concentrating your fun in your attacks, then go WP.

If we were talking brutes, with their higher HP (leveraging WP's regen better - not that it's bad for the scrapper, mind you) and with their inability to stealth stuff due to fury, I might be more inclined to WP. But anyway you look at it, you should enjoy yourself a lot no matter which one you pick.

Have ATIOs been included in Mids yet? I don't think so... If that's the case, it might be cooler if you extended the deadline until that happens...

I think people like confusing AVs because it doesn't cause any aggro while you pile up the mag on them, not because AVs are particularly weak against it. Check out the wiki: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Purple_Triangles and http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Protection. With the PToD up, AVs have the same +50 mez protection mag versus fear and confuse that they have against holds or stuns... Plus whatever they already have while the PtoD are down (which is usually 3, like a boss).

I also think there's some variety among the AVs and some are weaker to one type of mez or another, but I honestly can't remember whether there is a significantly larger number of AVs that are weak versus fear... (AVs do have a sleep hole in their PToD protection, which isn't useful while attacking them, but can be quite nice if you're facing more than one but only want to fight one at a time... And an immob hole, too, which seems to be there just to let controllers set containment...)

My problem with Terrorize is that it DOES let the baddie (or goodie?) attack you... Fine, it's only once every 4 seconds, but some of these guys can hit HARD, and with powers that deal more than 1 tick of damage separately (of which there are quite a few), I think they can actually 1-shot you. So holding/stunning/confusing or even sapping them, if you can, seems more effective than the Fear strategy, even if there is some extra fear in the power pools...

Me... I personally usually don't bother trying to control most EBs/AVs unless it's a really problematic one, and instead just eat however many purples I need to take my relevant defenses to the softcap (usually not many, since after going for permadom I usually go for S/L and/or Ranged def as a build goal) and then just bring down the pain with my assault powers, bringing the foe down that much sooner. It's one of the things I like about Doms: their damage is really nice (even in the rare-ish moments when the controls are not doing that much).

OTOH, Domination+Power Boost+Terrify+Invoke Panic+Intimidate does look like a fun and original strategy for tough targets. If you already have enough recharge for permadom, defenses to help you out while you pile up all this fear until it beats the PToD and to minimize the risk of that attack every 4s, plus enough well-slotted attacks to actually damage the foe, by all means go for that. But I personally wouldn't sacrifice recharge, defense or damage to be able to pull it off. YMMV.

For the record, I didn't pair my dark/ blaster with /dark... One of dark blast's main advantages for me is how easy it makes to keep baddies at range (and debuffed and on their backsides and held and healing me... ), while /dark seems to require a lot of blapping. Mostly I've seen dark blast used in ranged-only (or primarily ranged) builds paired with /energy, /cold or /mental and that's how I play mine (the cold version, though all three of the above look so tempting it was hard to pick one).

Also, IMHO, Dark Control and Dark Assault are looking pretty good.

P.S.: Sorry for the brief threadjack.

Terrify is already a mag 3 terrorize, so with domination up you'll already be neutering multiple bosses and everybody else, or all lts. and minions without the domination (permadom is not so hard to get anyway, so you probably should aim for that)...

So I don't see what you gain from using Invoke Panic (and having to pick two other powers from the presence pool, which I personally feel are all pretty wasted with all the crowd control dominators already have). IP is also a PBAoE, so you'd have to use the cone from range and run in to stack the AoE terrorizes... Just go for the domination+Terrify everyone combo and you should be great.

Remember that Terrify has pretty good AoE damage, too. I tend to see it as more of an AoE damage power for builds that lack it (and Whirling Hands is not such stellar AoE damage) which also helps to control than primarily as a hard control power. And slot it accordingly.