Phosphorescency

Bots/TA is far better than most give it credit for. My Bots/TA has the protector bots slotted with two l50 IOs for def buff, maneuvers, the +def unique IO, flash arrow, and nightfall. It takes a bit of work, but critters have nearly as low a ToHit chance as against a bots/ff, with quite a bit more damage potential.

Speaking of AE, I haven't tried mine in an AE recently, have they fixed the latest Oil Slick Arrow bug yet, where it wasn't lightable in AE missions?

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One more question concerning Frozen Aura: If you slot the sleep set's "10% chance for 5% heal" can it proc multiple times in one application of the power. ... can it proc off of, lets say two people for a 10% heal in one usage?

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It will only hit once unfortunately.



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FWIW, I have this proc slotted in my Inv/Ice tank. And running a few missions on him this afternoon, I twice saw the heal fire off twice on a single use of Frozen Aura.

Not sure what's up here, but I'm not getting the same once-only results you are. I rather like the heal proc in the power.

Since you're pushed into Beheader (bad attack once you have a full attack chain, good until then), you can and should skip one of Chop or Gash. Probably Chop. The need for Build Up on a tank is partially playstyle.

Pendulum is an absolute must-have. Whirling Axe is really handy on most tanks for aggro management, but an Ice tank wouldn't need it as much for that. The animation is a bit longer than I like for an attack from a tank, but it is AoE damage.

Really, Axe is a fairly balanced set. The single target attacks are mostly the same, more damage = longer recharge and activation time. Beheader is the only exception. Cleave is slightly better than the rest since it's a cone, though a super narrow one.

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I'm thinking Dark/Trick Arrow. You can immobilize your foes, debuff the crap out of them, then nightfall them into oblivion. take a natural origin so you can ignite your tar patch and all should be well with the world. :-)

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Umm, ignite the tar patch? And if it's an Oil Slick you want to ignite, I recommend magic or tech origin!

Wasn't there a brief period after the initial release of WP when the taunt aura for scrappers worked far better than intended? All I can think of that might be a nerf that would stop them from tanking.

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IOs are not the metric we should be using to balance/compare what defines an "underperforming set". This is the problem that everyone needs to get over: realizing that an average set with IOs is still an average set.

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OK, but I find Super Reflexes, SOs only, to be an average set. Arcanaville's comparison of scrapper secondaries pre-IOs found it to be average at best, at the time it was one of the worst.

With IOs, SR is borderline overpowered. Some sets (electric armor, for example) benefit dramatically less from IOs.

Dispari, I agree that early levels SR is weaker than most. Weaker than regen or WP in particular, comparable IMO to dark and electric as a scrapper/brute secondary. With SOs it becomes good, very good paired with BS/Kat/DM. With IOs it becomes ridiculous.

If you didn't like leveling a lowbie SR, I expect you'd hate leveling a lowbie Blood Widow. Less defense and fewer hit points until you're about ready to branch.

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I think this thread should be considered a great tribute to the devs and their continuous work in striving for balance. If these sets are considered the "worst" or "most underperforming" or "least potential" that's pretty damn good. These sets can all tear it up

Like others have already analogized we're differentiating between 9.2s and 9.7s and not 2s and 3s to 9s. "Bad" isn't really "bad" in this game

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There are very few sets any more than flirt with being unplayable. Most of the sets mentioned here are merely lower levels of great than other options. (MA for scrappers, for example) They aren't horrid.

Gravity Control for Dominators and Electric Armor for Stalkers come really close, though.

Gravity for dominators--at least controllers get some good early damage as a trade-off for Gravity's weak early control. On a dominator, you get a bunch of attacks that all pale compared to the attacks you already get in your secondary. So in exchange for weak early control you get...nothing, really.

Electric armor for stalkers with the lower resist caps and lower hp compared to brutes is pretty bad. Painful unless facing all energy damage and not great even there. And stalkers aren't super end heavy to need all that +recovery.

These sets are still playable, if you're pretty good or really patient, but compared to pretty much any other option you could have taken, you're significantly worse off.

Psi blast for blasters
Electric armor for stalkers especially
Gravity control for dominators
Traps for corruptors
Sonic for anybody who could take thermal instead

AR used to be on this list, but it's been buffed quite nicely now. Well enough to be good.

Couple comments, I would note the secondary effects of some of the Earth powers. Quicksand is a good movement slow, but it's also a huge 25% defense debuff that really helps while levelling up especially. Place quicksand under almost everything, it helps low accuracy powers like Stalagmites a ton. Most earth powers carry a defense debuff, which helps make temp powers and vet powers like Sands of Mu pretty deadly.

Earthquake a a decent 10% ToHit debuff, also.

I'd at least mention that Stalagmites+Thunderclap stuns everything up to bosses, it's a combined mag 5 stun. You have to go into melee to do it, but you can stun every single boss in the spawn, nearly every spawn.

Snow Storm is a wicked slow, but I wouldn't use its effectiveness on AVs as a selling point. AVs resist -recharge pretty strongly, level 50 AVs resist the -recharge 85%, making it iffy whether it's worth the endurance to run it on them. (Edit-- Snow Storm also does a -Fly, great against some of the flying enemies like witches, pulling them down into your quicksand!)

You can certainly tank with WP, but the weak aggro aura makes it a challenge to be a "pure" tanker. You'll want a secondary with some good AoE, and Taunt.

The presence pool isn't generally needed.

Stone is your unkillable rock in Granite form, but I personally don't like the immobility, it's not like you can jump over and smack the critter that's threatening the blaster.

Ice Armor is your choice if you want all the aggro. Invulnerability isn't quite as good at grabbing aggro, but it's as good as anything not Ice, and it's a bit tougher overall.

If you want a secondary that helps keep the team alive, Ice and Stone are great there.

Any single set bonus is pretty minor, but several of the same starts to get huge. You can make a stone tank reasonably mobile, or an invuln tank indestructible vs. most damage, for example.

Or ignoring set bonuses, they're still worth having. My invul/ice has 5 slots in Ice Blast. In those 5 slots, he gets 69% accuracy, ED capped damage, 61% end reduction and 61% recharge. As a complete bonus, he gets some +recovery, some global +accuracy, and some energy/neg defense.

I have an Axe guide for Brutes in my sig, the powers are the same though how tankers use and slot them can be a bit different. They changed some of the power names last year, which does make older Axe guides a bit confusing.

Two scrappers, each dark running oppressive gloom makes most content a joke.

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And if your Dark Armor Brute is weaker than your EA Brute, you built your Dark Brute wrong. Very wrong.

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Provided we're not discussing substantially IO'd builds, I can agree with this.

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Pretty huge difference in my EA with and without IOs.

With SOs only, he may be tougher than /Elec. Probably weaker than anything else out there, and the self-heal felt like a bad joke since the modest defense, minor heal and long animation usually resulted in my taking more damage during the animation time than I healed.

With his IO build, he's soft-capped to almost all damage, has decent resistance to s/l, and can fill his blue bar plus get a small respite against 4 guys, every 27 seconds.

Still does have trouble getting and holding aggro vs. other brutes, but he's pretty darn tough now. Very survivable compared to most Brutes.

I like it fine for tankers. Great damage mitigation with the knockdown patch, a hold, noticeable slows, even a sleep. Lots of tools to help the tank keep the team alive. Decent AoE damage...eventually. Miserable single target damage. Can be worth it on a team-focused tank.

Would I like it on a scrapper or brute? Heck no. My job on a brute or scrapper isn't damage mitigation. It's damage.

Having a few quick attacks to help build Fury is always a good thing, but not exceptionally for EA. As noted, getting things trying to hit you is better for building Fury anyway.

Energy Cloak is fantastic for soloing, except when rescuing hostages. For teams, you'll have to work a bit harder to hold aggro. Taunt is really useful for this. As a bonus, some of the Taunt sets have fantastic set bonuses for typed defense.

My WM/EA had trouble taking as much abuse as some brutes until I got my IOs in place. With everything put Psi and negative soft-capped, a bit of resistance, and a little self-heal available, he can handle the alpha as well as about anything other than Granite.

Your non-suppressing stealth makes holding aggro harder, but not worse than, say, Willpower. Energy Drain has three purposes making it interesting to decide when to use it. It's end recovery, your "taunt aura" and a tiny self-heal. If tanking, you may need to jump in, fire off an AoE, and then basically queue up ED need it or not.

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Quick tips.
1) decide on your kb protection (I recommend Zyphers)
2) get key end managing IOs (Miracle + Numina's Uniques and Theft of Essense: +end PROC)
3)Target Max end bonuses
3)Add positional defense, 25-30%



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And at this point, you have good defense to one or two positions, good resistance to almost everything out there, mez auras that further cut down incoming damage, and arguably the best self-heal in the game, which no longer kills your blue bar.

It's a good thing.

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Also, take hibernate, you last longer when nothing can hit you. It is the perfect "I live" button.

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Will I keep "Aggro" while using Hibernate?

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Depends how long you're in Hibernate, you don't lose aggro immediately. Chilling Embrace has a base 13.5 second taunt, so against even-con stuff that's how long you'll hold aggro. Against +4s, about half that long. If that's not long enough, slot some Taunt into CE or Icicles, or take and use Taunt.

Ice/Ice should be in good shape against most things, you're never going to do uber damage as /ice, but you should be fairly survivable against most things.

But, if you're in your 40s on Freedom fighting in a Behemoth farm (fire damage), fighting Carnies (psi damage) or running Tina MacIntyre's missions (Anti-Matter's robots mammoth -def debuffs) you have to play pretty smart and play heavily to your strengths. Corner pull a LOT into chilling embrace and ice patches. You'll die pretty quick just jumping in against guys like these.

Assuming that you're planning on a -kb IO in there somewhere? I'd definitely push out Tough in favor of Build Up, the damage you can do in 10 seconds with Throw Spines, Spine Burst, and Ripper with the damage auras running the whole time is fantastic. And you don't need Tough until you start fighting Cimerorans, imo. Plus the end cost of running another high-cost toggle on an end-heavy build is very noticeable, and you may not have loads of +recovery IOs in place at level 30 to support it.

QR--good to have. You want it. Not MUST HAVE, but want. I'd say it's a must have on blasters and stalkers, nearly must have on scrappers, good to have on brutes, nice to have on tanks.

Since Build Up only affects base damage, and Brute base damage isn't all that awesome, it isn't as huge an impact as it is for some.

Still good, though, well worth having for the damage spike and the +ToHit can be handy some times as well. Not one of the first powers I'd cut, but not a power I'd say you must take as soon as it comes available, either.

The critters on that hill run 38-40, typically if a level 40 is the only guy in the area and around for a few things spawn to 40, but it's a better bet for a 38-39 though. Awesome fun for that range, though, since rarely in CoV outside of padded mishes do you get to consistently fight huge spawns.

I'll check that mish--I'm not a major farmer, but like I said, sometimes it's fun to fight huge spawns just because you CAN.

Here's a quick example IO build, no slotting changed, something that should be very affordable under 20 million. The only key is a bit of patience. If you went to buy everything on this list, today, at the same level....you'd pay way more than necessary.

Expect to get everything over a period of days of a week, and if something's a few levels lower than what you wanted, probably not a big deal, really. For example, the difference in price between a Serendipity def/end at level 40 (where that set maxes out) and a level 38 is fairly stupid given the tiny difference in def and end reduction between the two.

Goal in the build was to boost things like HP and Regen, along with recharge and recovery as possible, but mostly to make each individual power as strong as possible. Without breaking the bank.

Only expensive stuff is Crushing Impact and a couple of the less insanely expensive Numina's Conv. Those are a bit pricey sometimes even if you are patient and flexible, but affordable inside your 20 million budget and worth it. Salvage for the Scirocco's sets are a little crazy, sometimes it's worth it to slot below level 40s on those, different salvage requirements.

Much of the rest is pretty dirt cheap, worth having but nothing to get too concerned about later if you replace it with better.

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

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

Drake Hollow: Level 42 Natural Brute
Primary Power Set: Battle Axe
Secondary Power Set: Willpower
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Chop -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:45(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:45(3), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:45(3), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg:45(5), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx:45(5)
Level 1: High Pain Tolerance -- Heal(A), Heal(7), Heal(7), ResDam(9)
Level 2: Gash -- C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx:45(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg:45(9), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:45(11), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:45(11), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:45(13), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:40(13)
Level 4: Fast Healing -- Heal(A), Heal(39), Heal(39)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx(A)
Level 8: Swoop -- F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg:40(A), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:40(15), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:40(15), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:35(17), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:35(17), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:35(19)
Level 10: Indomitable Will -- S'dpty-Def:40(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx:40(37), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:40(37), Ksmt-Def/EndRdx:30(37)
Level 12: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 14: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 16: Rise to the Challenge -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx:45(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg:45(40), H'zdH-Heal:40(40), H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx:40(40)
Level 18: Whirling Axe -- C'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg:45(A), C'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx:45(19), C'ngBlow-Acc/Rchg:45(21), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:45(21)
Level 20: Quick Recovery -- EndMod(A), EndMod(23), EndMod(23)
Level 22: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(25), EndMod(25)
Level 24: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 26: Cleave -- Sciroc-Acc/Rchg:45(A), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg:45(27), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg:45(27), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx:45(29), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:45(29), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:45(31)
Level 28: Heightened Senses -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx:40(A), S'dpty-Def:40(31), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:40(31), Krma-Def/EndRdx:30(33)
Level 30: Super Jump -- Jump(A)
Level 32: Pendulum -- Sciroc-Acc/Rchg:45(A), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg:45(33), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg:45(33), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:45(34), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:45(34), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx:45(34)
Level 35: Mind Over Body -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx:45(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam:45(36), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:45(36), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:40(36)
Level 38: Strength of Will -- ResDam(A), ResDam(39)
Level 41: Kick -- Acc(A)
Level 44: Build Up -- EndRdx(A)
Level 47: Tough -- ResDam(A)
Level 49: Weave -- DefBuff(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- EndRdx-I:45(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury

Check that hill again, I just rolled over there and there were multiple spawns of 10-12 Freakshow each there. Occasionally they fight with Wailers, so you might have seen a spawn that just finished a battle.

I'm a supporter of early IOing. Just as an example, say at level 32 instead of putting in level 35 SOs you put in 5 Focused Smite. The bonuses are utter trash, but that's part of the reason you can buy the set so cheap...you can buy the full set for $250,000, where the SOs cost $200,000.

Yes, with the SOs you need crafting cost and salvage. But now you're done until you find something better. And at all level 34s, instead of 66% acc, 66% dam, 33% end you get 59% acc, 84% dam, 41% end, 59% recharge. So for the same cost or less 32-47, you can be far better off. And when you get your patron arc respec, you can pull those things out, sell them for a profit, and buy Crushing Impact or something nicer!

Are you looking for a solo build or team build? If you can, Sonic/Sonic is a great place to run a dual build, since you have powers that are great for soloing that are far less useful teamed (Shockwave, Siren's Song) and powers that are basically useless for soloing (Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven, Sonic Dispersion) but are the core of your strength on teams.

You can, of course, get all the powers in your build, but you won't have them all until your 30s at the earliest where two separate builds can get everything needed for teaming and soloing much earlier.

Also, the guides section of the defender board has several sonic/sonic guides, most of which have sample builds.

Can't stop without mentioning an alternate fund-raising approach, which you'll see detailed better in the Market forum, under being an evil marketeer.

You'll notice that some items swing widely in price? Well, as a villain you can take advantage of this. Drop a bid on a stack of 10 of something toward the low end of it's price range. Run a mission, or log off. Come back, grab your new stuff, and place it on the market, closer to the high end of its price range. Run a mission or log off. Profit. Rinse and Repeat, with multiple stacks of 10 as needed.

I prefer to play the game vs. playing the market, but it's an alternate mini-game in CoX that I have taken advantage of, especially following spikes of server activity.