Linea_Alba

I was (at least at times) only getting level shifted if I stood in a light or very near it. I was going to suggest that when you run, run to a light so you ensure you get the buff. I don't know if this is working as intended.

If it makes you happy, that's all that matters.

If you want other builds to look at, my build is in my sig, as well as several other builds in the archives in my sig.

Full Image Link

Agent Kiski Tier 4 Time/DP +4x8 Solo ITF in 3:45 with 8 Defeats.
It was closer to 2:45 if you take out dishes and laundry breaks. However, since I leverage Lore, some of that time should be added back in. Times below are estimated.
Mission 1: 45m, 2 x T9 Crash Defeats, 1 x Defense Cascade Failure
MIssion 2: 45m, 2 x T9 Crash Defeats, 2 x Crystal Defeats
Mission 3: 60m, 1 x T9 Crash Defeat, 1 x Defense Cascade Failure
Mission 4: 60m, no Defeats.

Your defense is low for a non-hover build. I'd go Melee +defense, or modify the build for more defense or hover.

Assault: Both T3s, T4 after i24 testing.
Melee: If you're a land based tank build, both T4s have their uses, and I plan on taking both. If you're a hover blaster support/offense build then these aren't going to be overly useful, but you could still use the Melee +res front load if you so desired, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Control: Could be useful combined with the ATO, but doesn't appeal to me.
Support: Support Double Defense to Pets is my choice here.


Assault is very buggy, both branches. Assault Core is currently broken, but if used to advantage is likely the better choice of the two if you're pet based. Once fixed, and after the i24 nerfs, all bets are off on either assault. For now I'd get T3 Radial and T3 Core, test both on a pylon with your build and playstyle ... keep them till after i24 fixes the bugs and finalizes the PPM nerfs. Then retest them and make the T4 out of the winner.

Crabs have a high res cap, making Melee +res a good option as well, assuming you have the defense to backup the res.

While I don't see a strong reason to go control, it could be combined with the ATO for more control. I don't see that choice and playstyle appealing to me.

Support is currently buggy. However, once the bugs are fixed the double defense buff to pets version would by my pick there. If you're running a hover blaster offensive build, you could be dishing out 1000 dps with the combination of you and the pets. You don't really need more offense. As hover support if you cap range or at least push range up above 32.5, then you're covered on defense. That leaves keeping your pets alive so they keep dishing out the damage.

6 hours ... O.o ... my defender could do that. Tier 4 SS/Fire Brute should be 3 hours or less.

If I was doing Emp, I'd either do Emp/Sonic or Emp/Fire with a Green Machine build. Emp/Sonic will have minimal endurance issues while Emp/Fire will burn blue like mad when the buffs are down. Sonic also gives you some more soloing options with the Siren's Song sleep power that can be combined with the Epic Mass Hypnosis Sleep power to sleep entire spawns including Bosses. However, I would only play an Emp if I had a steady and reliable Emp partner with a Green Machine build to duo with, I would not bother with soloing it since it would be half-power solo as compared to paired with another Green Machine.

Without a partner, I prefer Dark/ or Time/

My current favorite is Time/ for team support.
I'm useing Time/DP, but Time/Fire has more offense while costing more endurance. I'm built for very balanced endurance over the long term. The Time/DP can fight indefinitely non-stop, for hours if need be. Time/Fire will have to mitigate the endurance issues somehow to do the same. This is really only an issue if you plan on doing something crazy like soloing an ITF +4x8 instead of the more reasonable +1x8 or +2x8.

+37 to +55 defense to the entire team.
+Recovery to the entire team
+Recharge to the entire team
+To Hit
Moderate healing
-defense debuffs
-resist debuffs

With Tier 4 Incarnates I can both solo 99.9% of the game and buff an entire team to similar levels of durability. Before incarnates I can solo 98% of the pre-incarnate game. I used the incarnates to add mez protection and offense. I have to carry BFs pre-incarnate and my offensive kill speed slows down significantly. However, as far as offensive speed goes the same is true of any pre-incarnate. For instance, Staff/Fire/Mu pre-incarnate is almost exactly half the offense/skillspeed as it is after incarnates.

Melee Fort: Melee Resists. I've got offense, defense, and control. I need resists or HP.
Crab: Melee Defense (9x1.5) or Support Defense (12) for ~iCap
Huntsman: Melee Resists most likely, or maybe Melee Defense or Support Defense.

What is, in your opinion and why, the best defender to solo on an all SO premium build.

Recently on a small team in the new Dark Astoria, I was on my 53 Time/DP , the leader was 53, and my other friend was a 45 StJ/Shield. The leader leaves, but doesn't logout yet. We keep on street sweeping duo in the graveyard full of 54s. Easy peasy. Somewhere along the line one particular ravager is just incredibly tough. I just assume ravagers must have a Tier 9 I'd never noticed before. Fine, It'll drop in 2 to 4 minutes, and we'll just clear the rest of the spawn first. So 5 minutes later We've cleared most of the rest of the spawn, but the Ravager is still hanging on. We whittle him down eventually and stop to rest thinking "Wow, those level 54 Ravagers have one bleep of a Tier 9." Shortly later we finally notice we're fighting at 45 and my level 45 friend is the team leader ..... Since then nothing in DA scares me.

Yes +9 Ravagers are Beasts, but we still won.

I'm using a variation of Staff/Fire/Mu (Link) with Agility and Blessing of Tielekku for 49 to 54 Melee, 32 to 34 Ranged, 29 to 32.4 AoE depending on the exact variation. I'm built for AoE, not ST. I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with the higher Melee, slightly lower Ranged/AoE version, even though it means I fall short of the 32.5 softcap with small purple benchmark for Ranged/AoE. It's no tank, It's not SS/Fire either, but it's neither a slouch in offense nor defense.

nvm. Replied to the wrong thread.

Classic Scrapper-Lock: Claws/SR was scrapper-lock before scrapper-lock was invented.

I'd also recommend: Kat,BS,Titan,Staff with Willpower.

Staff-Kat-BS-Titan / WP - It's good from level 1 to 50, on SOs, Generics, or IOs. It's definitely the way to go as a beginner. All other answers are more complicated than 1 sentence.

SS/FA is going to cost more than 3 billion.

Electric is a good solid armor, and Electric Melee is a good AoE set.

Try browsing the archives in my sig, there might be something useful to you.

Clarion Radial can modify both Cognitive and WoC. Slotted with the purple set and purple proc, then Combining all three (Clarion Radial T4 * Cognitive T4 * WoC) will make WoC a semi-useful power. Stacking WoC with something else, like Arctic Air? may help as well.

Otherwise, short of those fairly extreme measures it either makes a nice mule, or it's pretty useless.

• It's not big orange numbers. It's damage/time.
• Leveraged pets contribute a metric tonne of damage. If leveraged, which is difficult to do.
• Pets do not tank well. But crabs can leverage them to tank better, but still not that well.
• Crabs typically go for vectored defense. You want 45 defense in the most important vectors or types. If it's a typed defense build, it will also as a byproduct have moderate to high vectored defense, but the typed will be higher. If it's a vectored defense build, as a byproduct it will have moderate to high typed defenses, but vectored will be higher. Slots are not typically used to raise both for the express purpose of rasing both, unless on some hybrid builds like Sword/WP, Sword/Invul.
• Most of the builds will have KB Protection IOs. Typically either with mag 4 protection or mag 12 protection. 4 protects from almost all KB, while 12 protects from the rest with maybe only one exception. Whereas 8 protects from little if any more than 4.
• Hover is used to bypass the need for higher Melee Vectored defense. The slots that would have otherwise been used for Melee Vectored defense are then used for recharge or other build goals.
• LotG global Recharges add up.
• LotG also has health bonuses and Regen Bonuses, those also add up.
• Each bonus is small and insignificant if it is the only one. However, an infinite number of infinitely small fractions adds up to an infinitely significant number.
• Yes. Achilles proc if leveraged properly multiples your total damage by up to 1.2x. However, it must be used properly, that includes how you fight as well as how you slot.
• The goal of most hovertank builds is to be able to use those slots that would have been used for defense for offense. Survive the harshest environments while also blowing the targets to tiny bits. What form that offense takes and it's magnitude varies. Blue Ruckus' offensive build can dish out 1000+ dps, where as my land based more tank oriented build does significantly less offense but is significantly more survivable when up close and personal face to face with the targets. Blue hovers and blows them to kingdom come while making funny faces and daring them to even touch him. Romans and their silly swords "Get a bow losers!" I get up close and personal, in their face and make fun of them even if they do touch me. I likely perform better as an off-tank than he does. But his offense blows mine away.

Looks as good or better than mine.
You'll need to double check the numbers in-game. I remember discrepancies with mids, but I don't recall the actual in-game answers, nor the exact differences in PB vs PBU. There were some differences.
~7.4, 14.8, 22.2, 2.8

You don't need agility. I'd go Musculature Core.

PB + Farsight + DA Temp
42.2 + 7.4 + 2.8 ~=52.4
Agility would boost this by about 3 to about 55.4
Close enough really even without Agility, given you have debuffs to cover the gap.

Clarion Radial T4 + Farsight + DA Temp
42.2 + 14.8 + 2.8 ~= 59.8

Clarion Radial T4 + PB + Farsight + DA Temp
42.2 + 22.2 + 2.8 ~= 67.2

You can use PB PBU and/or Clarion Radial with Far Sight.
However, don't trust mids numbers without double checking them by hand.

PB/PBU is as I recall about 80%, while Clarion Radial T4 is about 160%. However, I'd have to double check both of those numbers in-game.

Also, beware of mids and PBU effects effecting more than Farsight when you use the buttons in mids. You need to adjust for PBU by hand in most cases, or you'll see a distorted picture of what your defense will be for only 10 seconds, not the entire duration.

Clarion Radial has a similar effect, but in 4 or 5 phases over 120 seconds, instead of only 10 seconds.

To clarify, the effect of PB PBU and Clarion radial remains in effect for Farsight even after those buffs expire. However, those buffs also effect defensive toggles, but the effect on defensive toggles expires (shortly) after the buff expires. Clarion Radial + PBU + Farsight + Hail of Bullets spikes my defense well over 100 ... but only for about 6 seconds ... then it drops down to just over 78 for the duration as a Time/DP when I syncrhonize Clarion Radial and PBU, or 60 for PBU alone. That spike however, is great for breaking alphas with debuffs, if timed just right, and Terrible if timed just wrong. 8-/

If you recast a non-boosted Farsight, it will overwrite the stronger boosted farsight and drop your defenses. This can be a very bad thing.

While cylcing and synchronizing with Clarion Radial, you should expect a Zero to 5 second window of little to no defenses and plan accordingly. That narrow band of vulnerability can get you killed. Example, it's a bad idea to take an alpha while Clarion Radial and Farsight are both blinking. You can't recast till Clarion Radial expires, at which time Farsight expires, leaving you vulnerable for the duration of the cast times compounded by timing errors. While that's not a problem 1 second before the alpha, nor 5 seconds after the alpha, during that alpha it's a very bad thing. Better to wait 5 seconds, spike the defenses up, then alpha and ride the wave down. 8-)

The following is very close to MRA with Agility Core T4 and PBU. There are several other Fire/Time builds in my archives in my sig.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.956
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

CTO is wasted on any but the oddest IO builds. It is often wasted even on SO Veat Builds. It should typically be given a low priority unless you have a specific reason for taking it such as: "I want to solo +4x8 at level 25 on an SO build". Such an expectation however, may be a bit unreasonable, and as such the matching need for using CTO in the first place is then invalidated. A Kismet Unique is typically more useful.

You want 45 defense for the soft-cap. You can cap either vectors or types. Veats are more appropriate to cap vectors. If you need maneuvers and maneuvers to do that, so be it. It doesn't matter how you cap them, so long as you cap them. 40 defense is litterally double damage compared to 45 defense. Melee is roughly 3 times more common than ranged that is 2 times more common than AoE. If you aren't building for symmetric vectored defense, then weight your choices 3xMelee, 2xRanged, 1xAoE. Hover Tanking, mitigates a fair bit of melee damage by simply staying out of reach. It's perfectly acceptable to ignore melee on hover-tank based characters and build for Ranged/AoE instead. However, be aware that if you do drop down into range, you WILL be vulnerable on the order of 2x to 10x.

Frag as an offensive weapon is typically only useful if you take WAG or Patron->Immobilize and use it immediately before Frag. There are other ways to generate similar AoE potential without the immobilize requirement. As a combined control and damage, Frag is fine.

The fastest 1-50 times I can currently confirm are 2.6 hours.
THB's 4.5 caves at 35 minutes a cave is ... 2.6 hours.
Given the plethora of standard xp boosters available to vets, that 2.6 time can easily become 2.1 hours with standard boosters.
The average farmer I've run across is between 50 and 60 minutes for a full cave or 4 to 5 hours 1-50. (sans boosters)

I've seen very few farmers actually hit that 2.6 mark, but it is within reach. But, I see no reason to say it's impossible for a blaster to reach that mark. 2.0 hours, 33% more dps and 33% faster than the fastest confirmed and independantly duplicated times, I find that more questionable unless standard xp boosters were involved. If standard boosters were used, 2.1 hours is reasonable. 2.6 hours, is not at all questionable.

Note: Regular Boosters would put confirmed 2.6 time at 2.1 hours, 50% boosters 1.8 hours, double xp boosters 1.3 hours.

I've always wondered if you weren't better off with 6 or 7 half caves or three-quarter caves than 4.5 full caves. It always seems to me that once you kill out most of the cave somewhat quickly, you then waste considerable time at lower density. That lower density time might be better served by spending it in a high-density environment on the next half cave or three-quarter cave.

My staff/fire best is 70 minutes so far. Fully Incarnated I don't expect to pass much below the 60 mark. But I knew going in staff/fire would be good, but probably not as good as ss/fire. I don't like ss, and I feel like the staff/fire appears to be more durable and applicable to non-farm content. I don't mind running the occasional cave, but I'm more interested in all the other content the game has to offer.

I might have to revive my fire/mm or dp/mm just to test it out some more. Dp/mm blaster might be fun if I could with a few more tweaks.

+4x8 ITF Solo. I'll probably do the same with my defender some day. Just because.

Do you cave farm with or without patrols?

What's your average time for clearing a cave?

How do you keep them from scattering on a blaster. The mobs running away and/or shooting from range drove me batty. I was running Fire/Ment with RoF, and almost decided I'd be better off without RoF.

You should be able to get 32.5 SLFCEN, then use small purples. If you can get them to 30 SLFCEN, the DA temp will cover the rest. Otherwise go Sword/WP and cap them all. I generally don't build well typed, I prefer vectored, but I did well enough with Kat/Will. I have sense replaced the Kat/Will with a Staff/Will that was replaced by a Staff/Fire.

AF_Bill's build looks even better, defensively. I have no clue on the KM part.

I can't help you with KM, but here's a Kat/Will. You'll have to adapt it to KM and shift the defenses to compensate for the loss of parry.

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