Madadh

I was never a fan of stone melee, mostly due to the look of the set. But you're right, it does seem to have dived in popularity across the board, and I can't recall seeing any changes. Maybe it's just that several of the new sets are near as effective, with better aesthetics. Or perhaps, it's the changes to fury that no longer mesh as well with SM, more so than changes to the set itself.

Not having played a SM Brute myself, I can't make any better guess than that. But you are right, SM Brutes seem much rarer now that in times past.

I'd say what seems to fit your desire the most is a Fire/Fire Dom.

I'd agree what you want early is solid control, so I'd focus on holds and the AOE stun earlier, the aoe immobile later.

You can certainly focus on staying at range, if that's your preference. Hot Feet might be worth looking into later, once you have you AOE crowd control down, or maybe after you're fully IOed.

I'd say once you get to lvl 40, or certainly after you're 50 and start really spending on the alt (and most importantly, after you have a feel for the AT and these sets' powers) you'll almost certainly want to respec and do a few things differently, but it's not a horrible way to level up.

I'd prolly choose a leveling up power sequence something like the one below. Note, I'm not showing you any slotting, just a decent power sequence, and one that's VERY up to personal tastes. I, personally, really like living in melee, so my fire/fire dom didn't go this route, but it'd be decent for soloing, if not particularly rapid and it'd be much safer than a fire/fire blaster counterpart.

That's assuming you want to stick to a pure fire, pure ranged theme. If you're open to combining other, non fire powersets, as others have suggested, both /time and /dark corrs are quite nice...

I'd not go with a fire/therm corr, tho, unless you're mostly looking at teaming, or endgame, as therms early powers are almost all of the support/ team-defense variety (not personal protection), and the blasty type stuff, and/or stuff that ups your personal survivability tends to come pretty late (except for the PBAOE heal, which is quite nice). IE, for therm, nothing other than the lvl 1 power from your secondary (the heal) will help you solo until you hit lvl 35, and gain access to the tier 8 power.

If you're looking at a team-buffer/blaster combo, tho, fire/therm is a great choice, and is very ranged, very effective, welcome on any team, and fits the theme.

Since you specifically said 'weapon sets'..... I'd like adding -dam to the great def that FF offers. So, for that, go with DP and use chem rounds. When you're feeling less threatened, you can swap ammo types.


That said, BR would be a great choice as well. It seems a bit end heavy to me, but it's a strong set. Love the built in debuffs it brings.

Really, for a mostly support oriented build, almost any support set will do. None will have everything you want, but most will have most everything.

I'd go def or troller myself. I think rad emission is a pretty great all around choice, especially since rad gets most all it's best tools early. But it does lack any shields. Not a big deal if you keep the -tohit up, but there is always someone going to wander off.

Rad/sonic def or as someone else suggested, earth/rad troller are both pretty stellar support types. But truthfully, it's the support mindset and the understanding of your toolkit (whichever one you end up choosing) that will really make the difference. It really is hard to really pick a bad one.

They only real consideration I'd think about that hasn't been discussed is how early or late a set blooms, and how important it is to be able to exempt way down once it has bloomed. TA for example is a LOT different pre/post Oil Slick.

Nature/Archery Def for sure....


And maybe a Nature/Water or a Storm/Water.



Bio Armour I'll probably hold off on until (if) they add a Bio Weapon....

Very cool. Thanks for the replies all.

And I think based on that, that I'll be spending my next few Rewards tokens on the Fire and Ice set. Some of those pieces look very sharp.

Is there someplace convenient to look at all the costumes sets pieces appearance?

With the Celestial set soon (tm) to be leaving, and the perhaps the Fire and Ice set to follow, I'd like to make sure to buy up sets that interest me while I can.

Some specific sets I can find pictures of are teh above mentioned T9VIP stuff, and the Ascension set. There are probably a lot of other sets out there that aren't easily found (for example, in the Wiki) but those are the ones that spring to mind.

I could get behind being able to trade in transfers for some other goodie. In my case, I'd be grabbing character slots. But Forbin's suggestion of giving people options sounds like all around win. Obviously different people will have differing needs and wants. With options, all of them could be happy.

Slightly off the main topic, but I figure I'll ask here anyhow, since it is related. With the discussion of the celestial and ascension set, it made me realize that I always get these sets mixed up somehow. Is there a place where I can see pictures of all the given sets? I tried the wiki, but it doesn't look like it has images of either of these sets.

Yes, they can be found in the costume creator, if you've already purchased them, but if you haven't, they aren't.

Yup. I'm still slightly miffed about my bad luck, given that Freedom went live less than a week before I should have received my 5 year vet badge. So, now that badge is appx 8 months overdue. And when I've reported it, got the same canned answers that someone posted above, except for once when the response I received actually explained they were having some sort of problem with calculating the time.

I'd say, as other have said, that Freedom broke their accounting system (granted, it was damaged before) and that there isn't an easy fix that figures VIP time. Given that, I'd fully endorse Lothic's solution. Of course, I might be slightly biased, as that solution would probably give me 3 vet badges, due to having a few periods of inactivity.

For the love of Statesman's grave, can we not have Terra Volta ever month as a TF and instead once in a while get a Posi TF, or a Sister Psy (both last seen as a WST in August) or a maybe a Citadel TF (never has been a WST as far as I can tell).

There are plenty of TFs to choose from, let's actually take advantage of that instead of repeating the most boring thing possible (treading neutrons inside a reactor for 5-20 minutes while waiting for something to happen) every single month.

If you didn't update your CoH after a change, it'll act like that. If, for example, you logged out before an update, but didn't close the CoH app and didn't run the run the launcher after the updates to actually get and apply them, it might cause such behavior.

In which case, just close CoH and relaunch.

Other people have had vastly different results.


To the OP: If it's time that is most interesting to you, and you've decided to pair it with Beam, make it a def. You'll have the cool time powers sooner,and they are more effective. If you mostly want to play a beamer and shoot things, but want the time type buffs too, go with Corr.

Choose based on concept. Or flip a coin. They'll both be very effective.


Or, actually, now that I think of it, choose based on playstyle preference. Time/Fire will be in general more offensive in playstyle, and /Ice more controllery. At the high end and higher levels, Ice's blaster level damage scale will make the final DPS probably pretty close, the style and feel will be quite different in most gameplay situations, and certainly while leveling up.

I'd be OK with FF getting a buff, as I think it needs something to be more on par with the newer sets.

I think it doesn't need a whole lot, tho, so whatever it gets should be carefully tested.


I don't really have much of a preference about what type change that should be, but I think perhaps what makes the most sense is to add in some Defense Debuff Protection in to one or more of the powers. I'd choose Dispersion but a case can be made for any of the other obvious choices.

As an added note, not sure how long you've been gone, but any Patron arc will unlock access to all the Patron pools. The arc you pick only locks you into that story, and makes that one badge your only option. Said another way (hopefully clearer).... You'll never be able to pick a new Patron for that alt, but you can choose any Patron Pool, or even Epic, and can change that choice later, totally unfettered (well, until you run outta respecs).

Basically, it comes down to the fact that they don't want to give 1 player the ability to rain on other players parades. Any one player. And that sorta makes sense, from a business standpoint. They're going to check to see if there is any hint of a dispute, and count (paying) subs on one side and compare to subs on the other side.

If your sub lapses, do the costume parts disable as it is? I'm fairly sure they are already available to non subscribers (ie all former subscribers). So, then, I still fail to see the conundrum.

If they put it on the market, and people buy it, the people that bought it ARE paying customers.

Very cool idea to MOTD the info in-game!

However, those non-forumites might need to be told which day it's on. I know, in the ingame MOTD it does say, "This weekend" but you know how it goes. Someone will assume that means both days, and then complain after because they decided to come Sunday.