Laevateinn

Other than shields, the other big damage powerset is fiery aura. Fiery embrace adds roughly 45% of base damage to all your attacks, it has a damage aura and Burn does pretty ridiculous damage. Pair with the conveniently thematic Blaze APP for fireball and chose a primary with a good PBAoE and preferrably no redraw to abuse Fiery Embrace, and you're set.

Agree on slotting for S/L/E/N. There is now too much pure energy damage in the game at 50 to survive off S/L alone.

Pyrebird: 1,566
Razorgirl: 578
Hailforce: 576
Warpshadow: 551
Swordsmistress: 493
Turbogirl: 452
Ysariel: 355
Lady Divine: 282
Witch-Girl: 102

Total: 4,955

Pre-IOs, Cold is harder to solo alone because it doesn't get tohit debuffs (instead it gets ally +Def shields). It's not like Rad, where you toggle on radiation infection and immediately enter safemode.

Rad is less dependent on recharge. AM and lingering radiation can both be made permanent with relatively little recharge and AM itself gives you recharge. Cold really needs high rech to minimize downtimes on benumb, heatloss and sleet.

So on that basis I'd recommend rad over cold.

They're both very capable sets and either combination will do fine.

Shout surprisingly has roughly the same DPA as both scream and shriek (they are all in the range of 31-33 DPA, IIRC). Even on my high recharge build with heavily procced out attacks, just spamming scream/shriek did slightly less damage than having shout in the chain.

That said I skipped shout anyways because mezzing myself for 3 seconds everytime I attack is too much in modern CoH where you have to move around a lot to dodge unresistable attacks.

Don't use it at all. I make one build that does everything and plays effectively at all levels.

Two of my characters have really old exemplar builds designed to maintain set bonuses down to level 17, but they've fallen into disuse (as in the builds still have non-inherent fitness).

Might consider making PvP/exemplar builds for everyone when I have the time.

That build isn't S/L softcapped because half of the defense from Stealth suppresses when attacked. I would take CJ instead which also makes you more maneuverable. I can't find a way to softcap S/L/R without losing rech, though.

It's still pretty impressive that you got this close on a Blaster, which does not get good mods for Tough/Weave/APP shield.

Scorp shield isn't necessarily the best, since you also have the option of taking a resistance APP and capping ranged defense instead.

Having played both range softcapped squishies and S/L/E softcapped squishies, and having gone from one to the other on the same character, my experience is range softcap is far tougher:

1) You play at range so you get hit by less damaging attacks
2) You have resistance to back up your defense
3) You do not run into kryptonite enemies so often. e.g. if you are a corr with scorp shield on the ITF, you will solo all the Cimeroran spawns easily but the Nictus on the second mission will kill you. If you're fighting Carnies you can solo screenfuls of Lts and minions but the Ring Mistresses will kill you because their attacks are all neg/psi. This wild seesawing of survivability between spawns, and even between enemies in the same spawn, means you have to carefully watch what you fight.

Range softcapped squishies generally don't face this issue except against large pure Warworks spawns, since BCU and ACU have mostly AoE attacks.

Scorp shield is better if you have a character that needs to fight in melee since in this case ranged defense is impractical.

The thing is, it's not a damage bonus. It's 2x base damage that is affected by +Dmg buffs which is far more useful than any accuracy or ToHit bonus will ever be.

Controllers are really a 1.100 ranged damage mod AT vs. any enemy that does not have mez protection. (Blasters are 1.125.)

I don't like EATs because they're too closely tied to the game's lore, which I find lame and unappealing. To me the appeal of CoX is that it allows me to portray a wide range of characters from different genres, so concept, backstory and costumes are extremely important to me. I don't want to be forced to use ugly costume parts/forms or have a background that draws too much from the game's poorly-written lore. I could try to portray Widows and human-only Kheldians as something else, but the lack of power customization is still a deal breaker.

I don't like powersets that aren't near the top of their category. I don't see any reason to play energy or rad blast for as long as fire and archery exist; the questionable value of KB and the tiny advantage of -def don't hold a candle to overwhelming single-target and AoE damage. I don't see any reason to play a Blaster when scrappers deal comparable damage and are 10 times tougher. The more powerful a character is, the more fun I find it to play so it's important that any character I make be at the very top end of what can be achieved by players.

More broadly, I don't like characters that aren't powerful. My definition of 'powerful' is being able to dominate the majority of situations and content, being highly self-sufficient and needing minimal support from the team, and having high performance in a wide number of areas (ST damage, AoE damage, buff/debuffs, survivability, controls). An example of a character I find worth playing is a fire/dark corr. It's a strong debuffer, but it's also extremely tough with powerful layered defenses of massive -ToHit and -Dmg, exotic resists, a strong heal and IO defense. On top of that, it does good single-target and AoE damage in an exotic damage type. Such characters are very unlikely to be disadvantaged because if you take away one of their strengths they have others to fall back on.

I don't waste my time on characters that suffer heavily in a certain type of environment (e.g. Masterminds on speedruns), or are only really capable at a few roles (e.g. tauntbot tanks, "support" controllers/defenders). I enjoy my characters and concepts and I want to be able to play as much of the game's content with them as possible, whether grouped or solo, regardless of the team makeup and the ability of my teammates.

All of the above means that I don't find any appeal in the overwhelming majority of characters. In 3 years of CoX, I've created and kept just 8 characters, with two more currently being evaluated. And that's perfectly fine with me since I dislike making one throwaway alt after another most of all.

Re: 3), I prefer to rearrange teams while inside the trial map because any closed league loading into a trial gets teams scrambled, and any open league loading into a trial gets scrambled too if at least 1 player joins from the LFG queue.

The usual powerhouse sets. You know, Fire, Plant and Ill. Two of which do good damage, and one which controls the things other controllers can't.

I don't see the point of Earth since there's no point going overboard with controls in general. So much stuff out there is mez resistant, trial IDF spawn extremely boss-heavy and trial AVs are either completely immune or extremely reistant to controls. The true power of the controller is not as a "support" AT or a mezbot, but that it's a character that can be designed to have good damage, good control, good debuff and good survivability all at once - i.e. a tankmage.

With i21 you will be able to take Aid Self without needing Aid Other. So I would delay your respec (or plan another) until i21, drop Aid Other and take Grant Cover in its place.

Otherwise it looks fine. Your build is tougher than mine at the cost of some rech.

There are 2 problems with this fight - 1) the healing nictus, which heals more for every player or player ally (pets etc.) in a large radius of itself, and 2) the autohit nictus which uses uses a roughly 400 damage autohit PBAoE attack constantly.

When you approach Romulus and his spawn initially the healing nictus is the one on your left (east) side and the autohit nictus is the one in the back.

1) can be solved by having a melee kite the healing nictus away, by sniping it at range, by unsumonning weak pets, by using -Special debuffs e.g. Benumb from cold domination, or by having enough debuff/damage to power through its heals.

2) is solved by making everyone carry orange inpirations and eating them, by having +res buffs, by making a melee kite it away to prevent it wiping the team or by having players skilled enough to recognize the FX of the autohit attack and not stand inside it.

The Cimeroran ambushes and Rom himself are comparatively easy and can be handled even by underlevelled teams.