Justaris

So, to restate, you're looking for a human-only PB build that's good for taking point on teams and you're flexible as to tactics you use beyond that point. Sounds like what you want should be easily doable.

As for what to expect, all characters are relatively weak before SOs at 22. That said, PBs do quite well with their muliple heals and their energy-based damage, especially on teams where the inherent can actually make you much stronger at lower levels than other characters (on sewer runs, for instance, you'll likely do very well indeed).

On the matter of tactics, the human-form ranged attacks are somewhat anemic compared to the Bright Nova versions. Most human form builds take at least a few of them anyway, but your main source of damage output is the melee powers Radiant Strike and Incandescent Strike. I-Strike also has a hold component to it. Since you're wanting to be in the thick of things Solar Flare will also be key for you, and of course the shield toggles and the two self-heals.

I think you'll find that the PB isn't nearly as weak as you might assume. For Voids or Quantums in the low levels, generally eating inspirations and rushing the problem works best. The only thing that'll likely give you serious trouble is boss-class Voids but those don't spawn outside of a large team, so you should have help assuming you have one or two good people out of your 7-8 man team (which isn't always the case). Once you get I-Strike at level 18 it's also useful for the Q/Vs because of the hold component and the damage. Many people also find Super Speed/Stealth helpful, but that's more of a playstyle decision and might conflict with your vanguard fighter concept.

Likely one of the human-only variant gurus can give you more advice, but that's my perspective. YMMV.

It varies a bit depending on how you've build your Warshade, but the basic rules of farming still apply - pick something you can defeat in relative simplicity that doesn't pose much of a threat to you. In this case, something that doesn't resist Negative Energy damage well and something that doesn't mez. So avoid Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns or Black Swan minions, and enemies like Malta and Carnies should probably be omitted too (thogh I've had some success with Carnies so long as I take 'em down fast).

Probably the best choice farming-wise is going to be a high-recharge (read:expensive) tri-form build with perma-Eclipse or very close to it and good use of Mire and Circle. Recharge bonuses will be the overriding factor for your build as they not only enable perma-Eclipse but also make Mire, Circle and of course attack powers come back faster and thus speed up your ability to clear spawns. Then just find your preferred target and go to town. It's not quite as fast as some of the top-tier farming builds, but it's not half bad either.

Personally I think the threat represtented by the CoT is overstated a lot of the time. Yes, they have debuffs and controls which can make them annoying to fight, but a majority of the time people avoid them not because they're incredibly difficult but rather because (due to the aforementioned debuffs, controls, etc) they aren't good grind material for farming. If you're trying to level as fast as possible, be that through farming, PLing, grinding scanner misisons, whatever... if that's your objective, you're going to avoid CoT. Also Malta, Knives, Carnies, anything that isn't straightforward to knock down and collect the bounty for. I'd wager that mindset is more at fault for the "vets turning tail and running" than any real fear of being able to take down the CoT. They just don't want to spend the extra time.

All that said, I'll try to answer the question you asked. Energy damage tends to work very nicely against CoT spectrals (conversely, negative energy damage is resisted). I found that my PB and my Energy Blaster both cleaned up against CoT quite nicely. The main trick to the Circle is really the trick with any enemy group - don't aggro too many at once and play tactically. The CoT just happen to punish you a bit more than most if you fail to do that, especially early on in the game (I'm thinking here of massed Spectrals or of multiple boss-class Mages).

In terms of Defenders or Controllers, pretty much anything should work, though I'd avoid Dark Blast on a Defender because of the negative energy issue if this is a specifically anti-CoT character. Probably the single best Defender primary/Controller secondary for this would be Empathy, especially paired with the Leadership pool, since that should allow you to counter the tohit debuffs nicely with Fort+Tactics with Clear Mind to nullify the mezzes.

Another solid choice would be Kinetics with Increase Density to nullify the earthquakes thrown by Ruin Mages, though with the Kin you're going to lean more towards overwhelming force with Speed Boost and Siphon Power (and later, Fulcrum Shift) to take them down before they get their debuff/mez machine completely up and running.

These are just a couple of suggestions and really I can see any Controller or Defender being very useful indeed versus CoT (as I said, I really think you're giving them too much credit as a threat here). As for Carnies, you basically just want something to counter mezzes, ideally something that also protects or restores endurance and helps with Psy. So your top choices there are Empathy (for CM and for RA), Dark Miasma (psy damage resistance buff in Shadow Fall), Kinetics (ID, Speed Boost & Transference) or Storm Summoning (O2 Boost to protect against endurance drain). And again, these are just a couple of possible options - plenty of other things would also work well.

Okay... well at least we've worked out that you're asking about a character, that's progress.

What are you asking for does not exist as such. You seem to be asking for Blaster level damage output ("full on nuke damage") in an Earth-themed character. As we've pointed out above, the Earth-themed powersets are Stone Armor (Tankers, Brutes) and Earth Control (Controllers, Dominators). That said, with power customization you could probably recolor one of the blaster sets to something that could pass as earth-themed with some creativity. Maybe red energy blasts that you RP as lava? Just throwing out ideas. You can play around some, but if you want an Earth-themed elemental blast set, it's not there. Probably the closest match in the actual powersets is a villain, a Dominator to be specific, who has access to the Earth Assault secondary. That's about as close to an Earth blast set as it gets in the regular powersets.

As for a "teleporter class", no such animal. There are four travel power options in this game: Teleportation, Flight, Super Speed and Super Jump. Any hero or villain may take any of these powers. You can take more than one or even all four if you so desire. All four travel powers are the third power in their respective power pools. A power pool is a set of four powers which is available to any character.

Starting at level 6, you have the option of taking a power from one of the pools in place of one of your primary/secondary powerset powers. All the pools require that you take one of the first two powers in the set to unlock the third, and two of the first three to unlock the fourth. Since the travel powers are always the third power in their power pools, this means you have to select one other power (a prerequisite or "prereq") before you can get the travel power. If you want to teleport, all you have to do is take Recall Friend or Teleport Foe and then choose Teleport at level 14+.

There is no teleporter class. Also no flier class, no superspeeder class, no superjumper class.





In future, you might try to spend just a bit more time on composing your posts so that they aren't so difficult to understand - we're having to make a lot of guesses and assumptions about what you want because you haven't been clear. Maybe English isn't your first language and if so I sympathize, but all we really have to go in is what you type for us. Even if it's in broken English, typing more than just a line or two would help next time to give us more to decipher.

Well, since you've posted this in the Base forums I assume you're asking about an SG base that's earth-themed. If you meant a character with Earth-based powers, that's an entirely different thing (best bet would probably be Tanker or Controller as they have Earth-themed powersets).

In terms of a base, no, there aren't elemental themes per se, but the Arcane theme contains a number of very earthy textures and options including stone columns, dirt floors, rubble, crystals, and other things that might fit well into an earth-element themed SG base. As for telepads, you have two options: Arcane and Tech. The Arcane ones use a floating glowing crystal with a surrounding framework and could easily fit an Earth theme with a little imagination. That's the way I'd go.

Depends on how you're ranking the powersets, and for what. Obviously there's not one single master ranking that lists Powerset A as best Tanker primary, Powerset B as second-best, etc. If there were, everyone would just play Powerset A, whatever that turned out to be.

So the better question turns out to be, what are the specific strengths and weaknesses of Ice Armor as a primary and of Ice Melee as a secondary? I've had good experience with Ice Armor (not as much as some, like Aett, but I've played several Ice Tankers), and I have less experience with Ice Melee. Still, I feel qualified to give a broad overview on both, so here goes:

Ice Armor is probably the best of the Tanker primaries for holding aggro. Chilling Embrace is excellent for this purpose, and the slow effect means that enemies have a hard time escaping the radius of your taunt aura before it pulses again, resulting in more enemies taunted for longer. Icicles is also very good both to boost your overall damage output and to help maintain aggro. I've never had an easier time holding aggro than on an Ice tank. Energy Absorption is probably worth mentioning as a plus all on its own to playing Ice, as it ensures you pretty much never run dry of endurance and provides yet one more AOE to keep attention focused on you.

The downside of playing Ice is that it is Defense-based, making you highly vulnerable to cascading defense failures from stacked defense debuffs. Hibernate helps to mitigate this somewhat, but as an Ice tank you'll want to watch out for enemies that are tohit buffed (such as Vengence'd Nems) or that wield defense debuffs (such as Anti-Matter). Every powerset has its achilles heel and this is Ice's. On the flip side, Ice handles alpha strikes significantly better than most other primaries (provided you aren't getting an alpha of defense debuffs).


As for Ice Melee, if you're looking to deal a lot of damage personally then it's not the secondary for you. There are several Tanker secondaries that deal better single-target and better AOE damage. So what does Ice Melee bring to the table? Control. It brings damage, too, of course, but what makes it stand out is Ice Slick, which will allow you to manage crowds in an entirely different way. This plus the slow component in the attacks adds to what you're already putting out in the primary with Chilling Embrace, which both helps you to hold aggro and boost survivability indirectly by slowing enemy recharge and thus slowing the rate of incoming fire.

To put it simply, I've found that Ice Melee isn't spectacular for damage but is helpful for keeping spawns locked down as a Tanker, especially on large teams. If you're building with an eye towards a team role, it's excellent. If you're building with an eye towards a high-damage soloist, less so. Though my Ice/Ice soloed very nicely, safely if more slowly than some of my other Tankers.

Well, the short answer is "because you have it in Dwarf form". The human form build variant, like any build variant (especially for Kheldians) has pros and cons. You gain some advantages and take on other disadvantages as a result of the way you've chosen to pursue the character's build.

One of the most obvious advantages of choosing a human-only variant is slotting. By dropping 13 powers out of your build, you've vastly simplified the task of effectively slotting your character. You can also take maximum advantage of passive powers such as Fitness and toggle powers such as Leadership or Fighting.

On the flip side, the most obvious disadvantage is the lack of mez protection (outside of Light Form). The argument has been made in the past that Scrappers and Tankers get mez protection toggles and therefore a human-form Kheldians who has shield toggles and melee attacks similar to these archetypes should likewise be granted mez protection. It's easy to see where these people are coming from, but that argument only holds if you assume that the human form Kheldian is intended to function as well as or better than a Scrapper or Tanker. As a generalist AT this just isn't the case. The Kheldian can make up for this in other ways including control powers, buffs from the inherent and a nuke - whether or not this is a worthwhile tradeoff is subjective, but it's there. The human form Kheld is therefore more like a Blapper/Scrapper hybrid than a "Scrapper form" and at least in my opinion that's as it should be. Even in single-form variants, the generalist AT should still play like a hybrid rather than trying to ape a single role that it won't (and, I believe, shouldn't) equal.

So that's the long version of why there's not mez protection. Short version: because the Devs don't want you to have it and they hate you.



P.S. As for Restore Essence, it already provides XP Debt protection. I'm not sure why it doesn't allow EndMod slotting, as most other self-rez powers allow it and the power does give you endurance on resurrect. Possibly an oversight - I can't see any reasoning for that one. One other thing the power doesn't have is a few moments of invulnerability to allow the player to get toggles up and running, another feature many other self-rez powers have. All in all, Restore Essence could probably bear a good looking at.

My apologies - as I said, my schedule is somewhat erratic. I'm free this afternoon and tomorrow, but had to work all night Friday which made playing on Saturday morning... problematic. How is Freedom as a meet-up location, then? Or is this more or less off at this point?

Even if that were the case, theyr'e still not called Enchantments. Magic origin SOs are called Dimensional Entities. Most likely the OP is simply using the wrong word though.

Well, I would start by using a build planner so that we can see what powers you have and how you're slotting them now. This will make us better able to give advice. Also, this probably should have been poster in the Tanker forum rather than Player Questions since build questions usually go to whatever AT forum they're regarding. That said, we can probably help you here if you give us the info we need. In very general terms, you want to slot Resistance and Endurance in your armors, Defense in Invincibility, and Endurance, Accuracy and Damage in your attacks. It's hard to be more specific or tell you how to survive longer if I can't see what you're doing now.

Also, make sure you have your key Invulnerability powers well-slotted (Temp Invuln, Dull Pain, Unyielding, Invincibility). If you take the passives also (RPD, Resist Elements, Resist Energies) then you should be pretty tough. Invulnerability Tankers can cap their resistance to the most common damage type in the game (Smashing/Lethal) pretty easily so you shouldn't be having a lot of problems surviving unless you're fighting mostly psy-wielding foes and/or there's something off about your build. Posting your build will allow us to give much more specific feedback.

The only thing I'd be worried about is losing my name on my home server, but I can always create stand-ins to safeguard my names while I'm away.

I actually already have Khelds on both Champion and Infinity, though, so I'm covered, assuming we end up doing this at a time I can make. Cor Autumni on Champion, Iscariot on Infinity (both Warshades). I've also got Khelds on Triumph, Justice and Pinnacle and I'd be willing to server hop for this if it was at a time I could make. I'll just have to come up with an alias for Iscariot if he leaves Infinity as I doubt the name's free anywhere else at this point (and rename him back when he returns to Infinity, naturally).

Unfortunately my play schedule is erratic to say the least, a consequence of my erratic work schedule, so the trick will be managing to play at a time when you guys are playing. Here's hoping, though, it sounds like fun.

I'd say it'd be negotiable between the two people doing the transfer. There's no service for this, it's just an agreement between two players, so the exchange rate is whatever you and the other person agree it to be.

Some people trade straight across 1:1. Some people put a premium on Infamy because with CoH being the older side of the game there's more influence out there. I'd say your suggested exchange rate of 1:1.25 is a reasonable one. If you happen to be dealing with a person with lots of inf who doesn't want to do much math, he/she might trade you 1:1 just for the simplicity of it. It's whatever the two of you decide to be fair.




P.S. Askance
The More You Know...

It really is a big deal. It's something many people asked for consistently for a long time. We finally got it. Which is kind of the opposite of a bad Dev move.

Yeah, if they've written nothing at all, then the Description tab won't show up and all you'll get is their powers. Or sometimes they just put a space in or a stray keystroke so you get a Description but it's nothing.

Personally I still check practically every character I come across, unless I'm actively engaged in doing something else, because I love coming across a clever story or character concept. Different people play for different reasons though - some make 'toons' and may never ever write a biography for their characters while others form concepts before the character ever even makes it out of the creator screen. So some people will have interesting bios, some will have odd bios, some will have nonsensical bios and some will have no bios. Pretty much as you'd expect.

True, but you could also get some pretty decent Set bonuses for a pretty trivial investment of slots and zero investment of powers. Bottom line is that it amounts to a potentially significant build advantage from five BotZ Set Bonuses without the need to get all the powers a non-Vet would need to do the same thing. Plus Slow Res, plus KB protect, and so on and so forth.

But enough beating this equine.

This really can't be emphasized enough, and it's something that even people who've played the game in years past sometimes forget. Not only is this game instance-heavy, but it's become even more instance-heavy over the years since its launch. As a result, a majority of the population of any given server is likely to be in mission or SG base instances a majority of the time rather than being visible to a player running around the city at large.

There are good points and bad points to this setup. On the good side:

• No spawn camping. Since the vast majority of the game's mission objectives occur within missions, there's no possibility of another team griefing you or taking a spawn, nor will you ever have to wait for a spawn that someone else has come along and wiped out. There are a very small number of exceptions to this, but compared to many other MMOs it's a huge difference.
• Everyone can do everything. An unlimited number of teams can do Synapse's Task Force and take on The Clockwork King if they so choose. Sometimes players even form multiple teams and race one another. You won't be locked out of content because someone else is doing it/just did it - because you get your instance of it and they get theirs.
• Because we take eight or fewer players and put them in their own instance, larger aggregates of dozens or hundreds of players tend to be on the rare side, which means far less lag when doing content. While there is some 'raid-style' content such as Invasions, Hamidion raids and the Rikti Mothership which do involve very large numbers of players all on the same map, these are the exception rather than the rule.

On the bad side, however:

• Heavy instancing sometimes creates the false impression that a server is empty or a 'ghost town'. Players who do not make use of the tools for finding players or who refuse to learn them may have difficulty getting on teams since brute force methods like running up to people you see or shouting in broadcast do not work well when most people are not there to see you or to hear you.
• There are, despite the best efforts of the Devs to add new content on a regular basis, only so many instance maps. Eventually you will play them all. Repetition is part of any MMO and in overland-oriented MMOs you would see the same areas again and again - here you see the same warehouses, underground bases, demonic lairs, etc over and over again. There are special maps for most of the special content, which is a welcome bonus, but you will begin to notice you've seen a particular layout a time or two in the regular fare.
• Progress in instances is not saved unless another member of the team remains in the instance to keep it open. Therefore, in solo play, you may sometimes have to restart an instance if you get disconnected or need to log out before the objective is complete. This may not neccessarily be a negative, however, as it allows you to reset the instance at will if you choose to for whatever reason (to keep the mission to share with others, to farm the mission for desirable rewards, whatever).

This has all been explained a couple of times in the thread, but since there seemed to be some confusion I thought I'd try to explain it again using examples. Hope it helps.


Influence and Infamy are different currencies and can't be traded for one another - so there is no way to move funds from blue to red or vice versa. The usual way of moving money across factions is simple:

Player A has a rich villain on Server 1 but no rich heroes. Player 1 wants a way to move some of his stockpiled infamy to a new hero but no such way exists. Player 1 posts on the forums asking for help.

Player B has a rich hero on Server 1 but no rich villains. He sees Player 1's post and they agree to meet in-game. Player A gives Player B 11 kagillion infamy. Player B logs off and returns on his rich hero and gives Player A 11 kagillion influence. This is the usual way these transfers are done.

As noted above, this all depends on Players A and B being honest and dependable. If Player B turns out to be a scumbag and runs off with the 11 kagillion infamy without ever giving Player A his influence, there is nothing Player A can do about it. This is pretty rare, however - most people are decent in this game. Choosing someone well-established in the community is a wise choice since such people probably care more about the game and their own reputation in it, making them far less likely to rip someone off.


P.S. People are picky about grammar because this is a text-based medium. All we have to go on is what you write and how you write it. Spelling errors, grammatical errors, general sloppy writing - all of these things suggest that you either don't speak English very well or (more likely in many cases) don't care enough about what you are saying to say it properly. And if you don't care, why should anyone else care? It's the equivalent of showing up to ask a question wearing a ratty T-shirt and your underwear. People are going to look askance at you a bit. Obviously a forum post doesn't need to be a masterpiece of composition, but neither does it need to look like a typewriter exploded.

You did ask why.

Wouldn't mind replacing taking Stygian (Elysian?) Circle in place of Group Energy Flight, but otherwise I'd probably keep my PBs and WSs the same.

I'd tend to agree with Ninus. The whole point of the PvE rewards in the PvP zones (badges, Shivans, rockets, etc) is to draw others into the zone so that there will be people to attack. The risk of being ganked by other players in PvP is part of the risk inhernet in getting these rewards. Obviously, savvy players can time their forays to make meeting other players in PvP unlikely, but a player should not be protected from PvP when in a PvP zone.

If I go to Bloody Bay to get a Shivan and I get attacked, fine. I'm in a PvP zone, that's par for the course. It's probably good sportsmanship to fight me once or twice and then let me be if I'm only there to get Shivans and I'm solo on my Empathy Defender, but I shouldn't just be able to turn PvP off. I can always come back later if the villains are legion and I'm unable to do what I want right now (or bring in friends of my own).

If the player enters the PvP zone, he/she should expect to PvP regardless of the reason for entering the zone. The ability to turn PvP off in a PvP zone is about as good an idea as the ability to turn PvP on in a PvE zone - which is to say, terrible.

Obviously this is the wrong forum for the OP to have posted this in, since he himself says he just wants to share his opinion and discuss the matter but has not question requiring an answer. The matter of posting in the wrong area aside, however, I'd say calling bases outmoded or useless is pretty extreme. Is the travel shortcut aspect of bases/telepads less useful in the context of Ouroboros, Mission Teleport, etc? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's useless. In fact, for players trying to get Flashback badges using the "Only AT Powers" or "No Travel Powers" challenges, base teleportation is a giant advantage as it is the only thing not blocked.

And this doesn't even get into the many other things a base offers: a creative outlet that a group can be proud of, a meeting place for a group that convenently connects to many zones (assuming telepads), a storage depot for salvage, enhancements and inspirations, and a crafting station for IOs and temporary buffs. Bases do a lot. As for making something else less convenient (i.e. the suggestion for Ouroboros) just to make people value base teleportation more, I'd say that's ridiculous and unnecessary. It's needless nerfing. Big thumbs down to that notion.

There are plenty of uses for bases right now - while the teleport option may not be as prized as it once was now that we have so many options for getting around and while it's a given that base raids are a long way off if they ever see the light of day, that doesn't mean that what bases do now isn't valuable. Just because some people talking in broadcast don't happen to use them much doesn't mean the rest of us don't use them a great deal.

They really do.

Caveat: They really do make the difference if the team is reasonably well-organized. You can defeat more enemies, at higher difficulty and at a faster pace on a steamrolling team. This results in very fast leveling, especially if you've got Patrol XP in play, or you're on a double XP weekend, or you've got a Day Job bonus to xp... or all three.

On the other hand, if your team spends twenty minutes figuring out what mission to do next and at least half the team is always afk at any given moment - or half the team is dead at any given moment - then you might just get better use of your time playing solo.

But yeah, with even a reasonably competent team, the difference in leveling speed is signficiant. With an excellent team, the difference is phenomenal.