Haruu

I hear alot about end builds in this thread, what about mid game builds. How does empathy (lets take Ice/emp troller, Emp/Ice Defender, and ice/pain cor) and compare at 4 distinct level ranges:
lvl 20
lvl 25
lvl 32
lvl 40

Take into account both solo play, and team play. List specific powers that would be must haves, list buffs, debuffs, max damage, etc. No IO's, just SO's, But show why at each level your vote is stronger for solo and or team.

I included trollers since they are empaths. I did not include MM's because none of their primaries are anything like the other three. MM's are like apples and oranges. Heck trollers barely fit, but I think they still compare at least a little.

Anyone have opinions on who wins what categories and why?

I want StrongPretty/ Mastermind.

the 3 henchmen powers summon WM/EA brutes, and you can equip them with web laser shooting baseball bats, and nachos.

Thanks, That answers my "If I make a sonic/rad what epic do I want?" question I think. Well maybe...

I guess I should ask now that I think of it, and mind you we are making a team of Sonic/Rads for GM/AV hunting. Which pool power would go better, Conserve Power of Power Boost?

We each want to be able to Solo AV's/GM's, but plan on running a team of them. (Monster Island looks like a great place for us to play)

Quick question, does power boost increase the -res elements of sonic. I know it affects things like Sirens Song, or def debuffs, but I cant find anything that says yes or no on -res

But even with a complete chain, DPS (per the entire activation/recharge) really does matter.

the damage per second of cooldown matters because your best attack you want up fastest. It doesn't matter if you have an attack that hits for 500 damage (outher than 500 damage being a great number) if it takes 30 minutes to recharge.

Nukes are a perfect example of this. Many people live by being "rolling nukes" using BU+Aim+nuke, then moving onto the next group after eating a blue or two. They must get the recharge down to less than a minute on all three powers to be viable, which is why you see so many people in the second camp. These people either take the nuke and use it from time to time, or dont take it. Its not worth the crash, nor recharge to become a staple (and I am talking about crash nukes. Nukes like RoA are in a differant league but even with those I know quite a few people that never take tier 9 cause the recharge makes them too situational). I have yet to meet a single person that talks of a standard attack chain that adds in long rec abilities. Its almost always T1,T2,T1,T(3 or 4). This has more to do with when these skills come up, their reliability in being ready, and yes the animation time. If it takes the T1 1 second to animate, and 10 seconds to recharge, for 50 damage, is that better than something that takes .5 sconds to animate, 60 seconds to recharge, and does 110 damage? I personally would say no, at least not in comparason It might be quick, but the added DPS to the chain is low.

Thats how I look at things. A chain is great, a must have. Animation times are important. But if you are waiting a long time (in comparason to what you could be waiting) for the attack to come back, its not worth it. Recharge time is definatly a factor in powerpicks. Then again ive never been a fan of a power that buffs you for 15 seconds, and recharges for over a minute.

But my main issue has to do with pool powers out preforming set powers. I compared to Elec since everyone says on blasters its crap. Didn't stop me from playing one, and I love it, but I needed a baseline, and I knew Fire and Ice are sets that usually preform well.

Too bad I cant find DPS based off Arcana Time. From what I understand it does interesting stuff to DPS calculations (evidently the server works on so many ticks per minute and things only happen on ticks, so short animations suffer alot in DPS based off it.)

I hate c

My wife reminded me of a story from last weekend. So we were on our first ITF (We have played off and on for years, but we like the lvl 40+ mishes we never did the ITF) and she was on her scrapper, me (SK'd to her) on my Thug MM. So we are on the part of the mish where we are killing Cysts, and we had a party wipe (I was in scrapper lock and went left when they all went right, and then 1 by 1 they tried to save me after my henchmen were dead) and she said "ok regroup right here, everyone hold up" in chat. Less than a second later I hear (I love being in the same room as her and our roommate, I get to hear so much) her shout "Mother <Expletive Deleted> Cat hit tab!" (Yes our cats jump on the keyboards and like pressing buttons.... more on that in a minute) as she rushes in, eache party member hesitates, then one by one rush in after her, but there is no party cohesion, and within seconds most of them are dead, Im healing up a storm, dropping thugs trying to pull aggro, using gang war, Painbringer, every buff and debuff I have. We start making headway, out of our 7 people, 4 had died, I rez a rezer, my wife is lovin painbringer on her kat/SR, everybody is back up just in time to watch me lick the floor. I had been using copious amounts of share pain, and someone dropped a cyst that was right next to me, as I was moving twards someone else that was dropping another one.... bad day. Anyway I fall flat on my face, all my thugs drops, so aggro goes all over the place. I rez to hospital and use mission teleporter. I look over at my wife's screen and 3 more people are dead. I get back on the map, Superspeed back to the fight (this is only about a min and a half after the cat jumped on the keyboard) and pop share pain+Painbringer on my wife just as she is about to drop (the only people that are alive at this point is me and her and she has like all the aggro). I rez the rezzer again, tell the other MM to use a wakie, cm->soothe->null pain him, pass him 2 blues, and start healing the party. At this point it gets easy since there are so few enemies left. At the end I look at my wife's toon (the only one of us that didn't die) and see the bodies around her and think about River standing over the bodies of all those Reavers.

Second story is about the cats we have. One cuddles playstation controllers, and likes watching Katamari Damacy. Another one loves watching shows like House, CSI, and NCIS. Another one (the one from above) likes to plop down on people keyboards and listen to the beeps that happen when you hit 60 or so keys at once. Our last one suffers from scrapperlock.

Once our roommate was playing WoW. He just got level 20 or so (Id say he was at 20.3), and was hungry, so he turns off his moniters (everyone in my house uses at least 2 screens on their rigs), steps away, and goes to the chinese place down the street to order 8 orders of potstickers. It takes about 30 mins or so for him to get his order, and I am keeping him company (at a cost of him giving me an order of potstickers). The wife was at work this whole time. When we get back, he is something like half a zone from where he walked away, and level 21, and the fourth cat is sitting next to his keyboard with her paws near the "wasd" section. Yes our cat played WoW and leveled him faster than he could have. This isn't the end of the story, this cat loves watching CoH. Loves all the colors and movements. A few weeks ago I made a Sonic/MM Blaster, and the cat would meow loudly every time i used any of the sonic powers. The funny part, we named her Banshee 3 years ago. She likes the sound FX for Sonic.

My wife has re-bound her tab button to target nearest enemy -> follow. Orriginally this was on her kat/SR scrapper that has a run speed of about 60mi/hr with sprint on (She only uses Speed when crossing zones). She hates indoor maps because walls get in the way of her scrapperlock.

The funny part of the story is we were playing our villians. Her a fire/Pain Cor, me a Thug/Pain MM. We are always partied with SG mates so its common to be in a team of 6-8. So I summon my thugs, laydown Gang War from time to time, and outside of that I spend my time healing/buffing/debuffing. She autoclicks the aoe heal, and soothing aura, and starts blasting. So on the day in question (we were in mid 20's) my thugs had been killed, the other MM was out of end, and resting, our brute was waiting, and our dom was afk. All of a sudden I see my wife run into a group of +3 Freaks and blast away. I hear from across the room "Crap Crap, I hit tab!" I think she came out of it alive be me calling in Gang War, and spam healing her with Soothe + Share Pain.

Im lookin forward to the set. Hurl drops the enemy to the ground, spears hits. Then again Im going for perma-PBAOE hold (Including 1 hard target) Ice/Earth combo which will have tons of procs. Not a cheap build, nor "easy." The good news is, I wont have any problems fighting 90% of the game (very little flys, even less cant be grounded). The bad news, No fighting Banished pantheon (masks cant be grounded last I checked), nor could I ever hope to go on an ITF and be of any help vs healing nic.

Also the set looks fun. It looks new. And I am not really caring if it is 20% less damaging than the next set up, It still out DPSs a defender.

mastermind: Cow/Traps. Use Detonator on a cow, and after the explosion you have a burger. You then use the new MM command "petcom_all Eat_Burger" in which they all partake in said burger and they all become raving "Mad Cows." They now have Psychic Melee powers, and anything they bite has a 5% chance of becoming a Were-Bovine, that follows you around as an uncontrolled pet as long as it's night outside. When day breaks, they switch back into what they were before, automatically aggressive to you.

October would be awesome with this.