PeterAlmighty

Having played a DM/WP scrapper to the mid 20s and then remaking him as a brute (currently lvl 34ish) I'd say they feel pretty different. I dunno, scrappers have been my favorite AT for a long time, but eventually I just felt like "damn, this combo feels like it'd be more fun as a brute," and sure enough, it was One more thing: it always kinda annoyed me that DM scrappers don't have an attack with a high crit chance, as the other scrapper primaries do.

Aside from shadow maul, a lot of the DM attack animations are pretty quick, allowing you to build up fury quite quickly. For this reason, shadow punch is a must-have for a DM brute (IMO) because it is incredibly quick-activating, builds fury well, and does great damage. Also, I remember reading (over a year ago) that shadow punch has THE best DPA of any scrapper attack (could be wrong). As such, wouldn't the highest DPS attack chain make good use of this attack?

...Actually I just checked and it's not the highest DPA (maybe they changed it?), but it's still not too shabby at all.

BTW, great guide Heraclea! I too picked up air superiority (since I love it so damn much) and it fills in my chain and adds a lot of utility.

Regarding shadow maul: I took early and don't really regret it. The trick to getting a good bang for you buck with this power is to only use it once your fury bar is at least 2/3rds full, and to make sure to line up a few enemies with it! Having plenty of practice with Dark Melee and Sands, I consistently hit 2-4 enemies. Also, the nice thing about lining up a few enemies is that you're almost guaranteed to hit one of them, so you won't be crying yourself to sleep after hearing that disappointing whiffing sound for three agonizing seconds

A couple quick tips for hitting multiple enemies: If you're planning on hitting two enemies with it, line them up and aim for the guy in the back. If there are three enemies and you're confident on your ability, run a little bit around them so they bunch into a triangle formation, then activate shadow maul right as you're facing the closest corner enemy (with the two others are right behind him to either side). Lastly, the best way to hit 3+ enemies regularly is to practice simple herding techniques, even mid battle. If you can break line of sight around a sharp corner, the enemies will bunch up and make this really easy.

Hope that helps! Good luck to fellow DM/WP players!

Thanks for all the great replies, everyone! I've decided to go with dark/mace (at least for my first tank... I definitely want to try the other combos eventually : ). I'm struggling with the power picks, so I have a lot of build questions!

Here's my Mid's build so far. I'm mainly concerned about choosing powers in a good order, so I haven't bothered with slots yet. I'm not really a fan of planning for a respec, but I'm open to suggestions.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 48 Magic Tanker
Primary Power Set: Dark Armor
Secondary Power Set: War Mace
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Dark Embrace -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Bash -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Murky Cloud -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Jawbreaker -- Empty(A)
Level 6: Obsidian Shield -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Dark Regeneration -- Empty(A)
Level 10: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 14: Combat Jumping -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Death Shroud -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- Empty(A)
Level 22: Clobber -- Empty(A)
Level 24: Taunt -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Oppressive Gloom -- Empty(A)
Level 28: Whirling Mace -- Empty(A)
Level 30: Tough -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Cloak of Darkness -- Empty(A)
Level 35: Shatter -- Empty(A)
Level 38: Crowd Control -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Weave -- Empty(A)
Level 44: Cloak of Fear -- Empty(A)
Level 47: Build Up -- Empty(A)
Level 49: Super Jump -- Empty(A)
------------

Powers I'm torn/iffy/wondering about:

<ul type="square">[*]Taunt - Ah, the age old question! I definitely can appreciate/understand its usefulness (autohit and ranged), but I also think I have enough experience with aggro management that I'll quickly master punchvoking. Does taunt have any effect on disoriented targets? would they start wandering back toward me?
[*]Health - Should I shot this baby up? How early on?
[*]Build Up - Hello, old friend! I would love to squeeze this power into my build to make good use of my delicious AoE potential, but am having trouble fitting it in. Thoughts?
[*]Super Jump - Gotta love combat jumping, but I'm thinking of skipping SJ to make room for more fun powers. I know this is a subjective question, but if I 3-slotted hurdle, would I be decently fast enough to get around comfortably? Also, is CJ worth slotting for defense eventually? or is the base 2.5% too piddly? And which power do you guys like to stick KB protection and the +3% def IOs into?
[*]Cloak of Darkness - Not necessary need since I'll have combat jumping, but the def is nice and I like stealth powers. Does the stealth ever interfere with your ability to grab aggro off a teammate? What's a good level to take this power?
[*]Cloak of Fear - This power looks pretty sweet and fears are awesome in general, but the end cost is as huge as death shroud (.52/s). This could help when the enemy is resistant to my disorients, and the toHit debuff is nice I guess, but I'm undecided. If I take it, what's a good level to do so?
[*]Boxing/Tough/Weave - I've never taken these powers on any character, but definitely would love to be (somewhat) indestructible. Since I'll only have 2 Mace attacks until 22 I'm considering taking boxing early just to fill out my attack chain in the low levels. Tough would definitely be a welcomed addition to the relatively low base resist of dark embrace, but it's another toggle (and this build could have up to TEN toggles going at once !), so I dunno.
[*]As for Weave-- Worth it? I have no idea. Is stacking defense really only worth it if you're shooting for the soft-cap? I figure every little bit counts.
[*]Lastly: Ancillary Pools - I've never dipped into these pools, but after perusing them on Mid's, I'm rather underwhelmed. The only things that really appeal to me are either stone prison/quicksand or chillblain/shiver/ice storm (immob/slows + my disorients = good?). But honestly, if they're not that great, I'd rather take more of the awesome aforementioned powers![/list]Sorry for the length! As always, any advice or commentary is greatly appreciated!

Hi all! I've been playing CoH since launch (a month here, a month there), but never had any 50s (my interest usually tapers off in the mid-late 30s). I usually favor scrappers, defenders, controllers, corruptors, and brutes.

So here's the deal: In all this time, I've never played a tanker! Spoiled by the incredible damage of scrappers and brutes, I always figured tankers were incredibly gimpy in the damage department. Lately however, I've managed to overcome this stigma.

The other day my friend made the astute observation that I try and tank with all my heroes. And yeah, it's pretty much true-- I herd with scrappers, anchor toggles, herdicane, what have you, and I always try and pull aggro off teammates in need. So! I've decided it's time to buckle down and try a real tank! Help me decide on what to make


Ideally I want a tank that can dish out both decent AoE and ST damage. Generally I like trying powersets that are unfamiliar to me, or unusual combos with cool synergy. I have claws/SR, spines/dark, and BS/regen scrappers, DM/WP and stone/fire brutes, all around the late 30s. I've also tried spines/inv, dark/dark scrappers to around 32.

Thoughts so far:
<ul type="square">[*]Not: fire/, inv/, stone/ (mobility is important to me)[*]I'm leaning toward ice/, dark/, or shield/.[*]I'm open to most secondaries... but I think dual blades on a tanker is just dumb (thematically), but I haven't tried the set yet so it could be fun... Also I fear that /ice is just gimpy, and that /SS is too vanilla (feel free to prove me wrong, though)[/list]
Here are my ideas:
<ul type="square">[*]ice/fire -- I read Garthalus' excellent guide and am intrigued[*]dark/mace (or /EM, or /stone) -- Stacking disorient with oppressive gloom sounds fun and powerful![*]shield/axe -- Knockdown comboing with shield charge! Viking look![/list]
Unfortunately, I'm getting kind of frustrating trying to throw a build together on Mid's since I want a lot of powers, but so many are unskippable. And to actually tank decently early on, I feel like you have to neglect your secondary a ton . Throw on top of this a travel power, obligatory fitness, the ever present questions of taunt, tough, and weave, and it's understandable why I've avoided tanks so long!

So! any advice at all would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to suggest completely different *fun* builds. Perhaps with your help I'll discover my passion . I'm sure I'll have more questions to follow!

Dark/Fire could work really well-- Imagine combining your burn patches with Midnight Grasp (the lvl 32 huge dmg immobilize). The -ToHit of the dark attacks (plus the fear) will boost your survivability, but siphon life would be kind of redundant when you have healing flames and a pain dom friend. FWIW: I really enjoy my stone/fire and dark/WP brutes.

Axe/shield seems like a really fun combo that I wanna try as a tank (shield charge + whirling axe + lots more knockdown), and would probably feel very brutish. I also wanna try a wacky combo: any disorienting primary mixed with oppressive gloom from Dark Armor. Stacking on disorient with EM, SS, or war mace could probably make for some nice ownage.

Also consider picking a defense based shield set if your friend has quick healing reflexes, or a resist based set if not.

OK, I got a little agitated at the flaming that was going on in the first page so I wrote this rant... it's not really pertinent anymore, but I'd hate to have it go to waste:

To all you obstinate preemptive healing naysayers out there, I don't really understand why you've gotten into such a heated debate over fact versus opinion. That has nothing to do with it! The real disagreement is your interpretation of semantics: Some of you believe the term "pre-emptive healing" refers to healing before the damage is inflicted, whereas some believe that it means *beginning to heal* before the damage is inflicted. Personally, I interpret it as the latter.

While healing is obviously inherently reactive, it's not too hard to predict a tank/scrapper will take a heavy alpha, and get a head start on your healing animation. Maybe you'll only shave off half a second, but we all know that can be the difference between life and a team wipe.

And no, it's not in any way "dumb luck" whether or not a pre-emptive activation will be helpful-- it's entirely based on skill (timing). A good player who is experienced with empathy powers shouldn't have too much trouble pulling off this kind of timing.

Miraj (and a few others), for what it's worth, I think you were really rude to Kahlan_ earlier simply because you refused to accept a difference of opinion in definition. By saying "So you may disagree, but you're wrong," you are being incredibly arrogant and presumptuous. Before jumping on somebody's case about being flat out wrong, people should take note of the ambiguity of terminology and accept that there may be multiple interpretations. I'm not trying to rekindle the flame, I just feel like Kahlan_ was unfairly assaulted.

So, to those of us who disagree on the meaning of "pre-emptive healing" - let's agree to disagree. And it doesn't really matter what the OP's team leader was talking about, since it's already a well-established "fact" that the person in question was on crack

Natsuki, thanks for the reply! Regarding your points:

I have indeed observed that issue with many of the DoT powers you listed. I was going to discuss that in my original post, but second guessed my perception of that phenomenon. I've noticed that often when Gloom scourges, it *seems* like some of the scourges on subsequent ticks are not guaranteed. However, I figured it was possible that the scourge damage was still triggering, just the orange text wasn't showing up (you know when there are a LOT of damage numbers all over the screen some of them don't display? it often happens during rain powers-- so many ticks of -1 that you can't even see your other attacks doing damage).

When I wrote the original post, I tested scourging Gloom on a few random enemies while watching the combat tab. It seemed like Gloom was scourging on every tick after the first scourge, even if the orange text wasn't always saying SCOURGE. However, my tests were by no means extensive, so you could still be right.

All that said, I still believe my original point is valid: If you hit an enemy with a burst damage power while a DoT is still ticking, you'll have less of a chance of scourging than if you had waited for the DoT to finish (or if the DoT had been burst damage instead).

I agree that (sadly) most scourge kills are overkill. But just because it would have been overkill in the example I provided doesn't mean it's never a factor. Since my dark/cold is only level 20 (and only has those two single target attacks), I've had plenty of time to experiment. There have been countless occasions where I've had to choose which power to cast first on a &lt;50%hp enemy. Casting Dark Blast first always gives me a better chance to scourge on Gloom than visa versa.

I truly hope they can and do make scourge re-check on each tick-- it would be a nice little (well-deserved) bonus to our damage output, and hopefully make up for all the damage we waste on overkill scourging.

Hi all, this has been bugging me for a while so I'll cut to the chase.

Disclaimer: I'm not talking about Rain of Fire, or any pseudo-pet DoT powers like that. I did a bit of searching before posting this too, so I'm relatively certain this hasn't been discussed much, if at all.

I've lurked the forums for quite some time and played corruptors enough to know that most people seem to think that DoT powers are better for optimizing scourge. Since the game should supposedly re-calculate the scourge chance on each tick of damage, each subsequent tick should have a greater chance of scourging.

Based on my observations, this is not the case. In fact, I intend to show you that DoT powers are usually worse that their burst damage counterparts. I am speaking mainly from repeated experimentation with Gloom from Dark Blast, and Fire Breath from Fire Blast. Here's the main thing I've noticed:

[u]If the first tick of a DoT attack does not scourge, none of the remaining ticks will scourge (!)[u]

I have noticed this trend on countless occasions- I have never seen a tick of a DoT power scourge if the very first tick did not scourge.

Furthermore! My reasoning as to why DoT powers are worse (that is to say that you scourge less often overall if you have DoT powers):

If you cast a DoT power (Gloom, for example), and then follow up with a burst damage power (say Dark Blast), the scourge chance for Dark Blast will be calculated using whatever %hp your target has when Dark Blast hits (before Gloom has had a chance to finish its 8 ticks). Consequently you will have less of a chance to scourge on Dark Blast than if Gloom had dealt its damage in a single burst.

Let's use an example with some values from Mid's: Dark Blast does 41.7dmg, Gloom does 73.4dmg

Say an enemy has 200hp, and I already have them down to 50% (100hp). Now I hit them with Gloom, and follow up with dark blast queued up. Before dark blast hits, four ticks of gloom go off, so the enemy's at 63.3hp. This means they are 18.35% below half-hp, and I have a (18.35%*2.5) = 45.875% chance to scourge on Dark Blast. Had Gloom been a burst damage power, the enemy would have had 100-73.4 = 26.6hp, which is 36.7% below half-hp, giving me a (36.7*2.5) = 91.75 chance to scourge on Dark Blast.

One last thing to note is that this is not the case with pseudo-pet powers, like Rain of Fire (as I've noticed with my fire/dark corr). Apparently those pseudo-pet powers do re-check for scourge on each tick, making them pretty awesome.

So, there you have it, and it really grinds my gears, to be honest. I was so excited about DoT ownage when I made my dark/cold corr, but here I am sad and dejected at the results.

Your commentary is welcome-- I would love one of you number crunchers to prove me wrong, but my results speak for themselves. Hopefully this thread causes enough of a stir to get things fixed