Phosphorescency

DM/SR is a nice combination, all the -ToHit debuffs from your powers stack directly onto your defense, making you pretty unhittable by your main target. The self-heal is great too, though Siphon Life is now a really hard power to slot appropriately since it has recently been buffed to also do fantastic damage. I'd like to 8-slot it.

One warning, SR is notorious for feeling really squishy until level 22 and SO's. Be careful about judging SR too quickly, it goes from mediocre to good at 22 and good to great with some IO sets.

EA no longer stinks, but it's still an odd duck. The heal from Energy Drain is pretty tiny, especially against solo-sized spawns (3% per target unslotted).

Energy Drain is a great end recovery power that also functions as your heal and your taunt "aura". Which is a bit at cross-purposes, since if you're teaming, you'd like to taunt immediately to pull aggro and maybe protect any doms and such, but you'd like to wait a moment to use your self-heal.

And if you're teaming, you'll need to taunt in some manner to have any prayer of holding aggro so you can build Fury, since you have a non-suppressing stealth power that keeps you invisible full-time that you can't really turn off since it's a key piece of your defense.

It's a slow bloomer, but with sets you can get soft-capped to everything but negative energy and psi (usual big psi hole in your defense) and a self-heal that isn't too bad once well slotted and facing several foes. I wish it had SR or SD's defense debuff resistance outside of Overload.

It's good at steady AoE damage. Three cones and a targeted AoE (not even counting Ignites tiny but potent AoE) it's one of the best for area damage. Two damage types, so you always have something unresisted.

Downsides, it's largely lethal damage, it doesn't have a third single target blast, you don't get Aim and you don't get a conventional nuke. Though I prefer the mini-nuke.

I like Energy, Mental, and Ice for secondaries, probably in that order. Energy for ranged-boosted, freakin' huge cones, mental for yet another cone of yet another damage type, and Ice for the Ice Patch+Ignite BBQ fun.

I think it's a bit better for teaming than soloing, just so you have more targets for all of your AoE attacks. But it can solo fine, especially with a secondary like Ice or Dev.

Elude can still be handy at 39% defense, but if you pick up any sets at all, I'd drop it.

Elude doesn't really need end mod if you take it. Practiced Brawler is easily perma with 2 SO's and Quickness. I wouldn't bother slotting end red in CJ.

AoE damage is going to hurt until level 35, be careful what you fight. Dropping to 2 level 50 SOs in the passives doesn't cost you much if you need the slots elsewhere.

I'd put recharge reduction in Soul Drain as a priority over damage.

For early play with such a short attack chain, Shadow Punch might be better than Smite. Better DpS when you don't have a full chain. Maybe take some of the freed up slots from above and slot up Boxing a touch, it's not a great attack but better than standing there.

One of those givens...if you have a Brute and he hasn't reached the 20-22 range, endurance management is a challenge. Most characters get better at that range, but Brutes just take off!!

Glad you're having fun!

I've played both Axe and Mace to 40+ and really don't see any substantial difference in Fury generation. If anything, Axe built Fury fractionally faster since Axe's three low end attacks animate a touch faster than Mace's. I had no trouble at all building Fury with either.

Mace has a bit better damage, post-Crowd Control especially. Until then, not a huge difference. Clobber from WM is awesome, but Axe's damage mitigation early (when you need it most) is otherwise better, the consistent knockdowns are hugely helpful.

Brawl on auto, take Beheader early, Fury is fine.

The OP hasn't been updated in a while, there's a BA guide in my sig, hope it helps!

I wouldn't skip Burst these days. The AR guides often knock it, but as noted in the posts above, especially mine and Fury's, Burst is a key power now. It's your best ranged DpS. Sniper Rifle and M30 each have points, but neither are better than Burst. Skip one of those two, I'd skip M30 unless you're pretty good at use of knockback as mitigation.

If you respec down, take Stamina before Acrobatics.

You should be able to get Slug, Burst, and Flamethrower 6-slotted by the time you pick up Full Auto.

What level is your tank currently? What kind of budget do you have, and how much of this do you already have?

I'm assuming you exclusively team...soloing with three attacks slotted for damage, two of them pretty light-hitting would not be fun.

It's an expensive build, all to get the fire/cold defense up to a decent level, and the psi def/res to a measurable level. The s/l defense is good, the energy/neg defense is a bit of overkill.

Throw a steadfast +def in tough, lose the 2nd travel power, take Icicles. I wouldn't slot Hoarfrost with Impervium, the modest psi bonuses aren't worth what you're losing in not slotting the power better.

I'd take a look through the thread on /EM, opinions vary a bit, but I believe every response here has touched on how essential Boost Range is for AR/EM.

Accolade powers are very useful, not as critical for a blaster as for some builds but ALWAYS a good thing.

You'll rarely need additional range in Recall Friend. The range is sufficient for most zones, though not things like the Shadow Shard. Still better places for the slots.

Once you have Granite, Brimstone and Crystal are pretty dispensable. I never took them on my stone/stone, Rock Armor +Stone Skin was enough getting to 32, most attacks have some s/l component to them. Post 32, it's either Granite or Rock+Minerals.

If you want to hold aggro, Mud Pots is your best tool. Especially in Granite, when your powers recharge s-o s-l-o-w-l-y. Incidentally, you'll want some recharge reduction in your powers, and Hasten is nice to have.

2 end reduction in Rooted is overkill for the toggles, they aren't that heavy. Rock Armor is heavier than Rooted, yet the former isn't slotted for end and the latter is double-slotted.

I'd slot swift a bit for run speed, it helps.

Taunt needs no accuracy in PVE, it does need recharge in Granite mode.

Tremor does nice damage, assuming you take Mud Pots, take out the taunt in Tremor and replace with dam/rech. Recharge in everything post-Granite, and accuracy in Fossilize and Stalagmites.

It sounds like you might have been gone a bit longer than a year and a half...if you were used to multiple phantasms, you might also have left before Enhancement Diversification (ED)

If you have more than 3 of the same type of SO slotted in any power--like 6-slotted Hasten or Stamina--- you'll definitely want a respec, things have changed a lot.

On WP/WM, I'd skip one of Pulverize or Jawbreaker, whichever you prefer, and I skipped Resurgence. If you're a team, aggro controlling tank, you need Taunt, but Build Up is optional...I fit it in very late.

Leaving out Resurgence and Pulverize/Jawbreaker, you basically have room for 2 of these 3: Fitness, Fighting, Epic pool. If you take Fighting, you'll want Fitness, or the Energy pool in order to have the end to power Tough and Weave.

If you're doing a lot of Mission Architect stuff, the lead often picks things that are as easy as possible. In those cases, a tank brings less to the team than another scrapper or controller.

Get on a team doing something challenging, and a tank is nice to have. Still not necessary...no AT is necessary in this game, but good to have. A buffed scrapper can absolutely take the alpha, but few can hold aggro well, and against hard stuff you want that.

We have a Dark/WM tank, still fairly low, but the stacking of all the disorients is a major goal in the build.

You're kind of pushed into the leaping pool even with the -kb IO, since otherwise you have no choice but to run Cloak of Darkness for immob protection and I haven't seen any dark tanks running the stealth on a regular basis.

The Theft of Essence proc is nice, but getting one is rough. They barely exist on the market.

Tough is a great thing to get, otherwise your s/l resistance is a bit low and your ability to tank for large teams will depend on your skill and timing at Dark Regen. You almost have to jump into a spawn, fire one attack like Whirling Mace, and queue up Dark Regen because you're likely to need it.

Weave on its own isn't great, but if you do make either melee or s/l set bonuses a priority and even add in Cloak of Darkness, getting a bit of defense is nice.

Dark Regen will suck up a lot of slots...oddly for a heal, heal itself is a relatively low priority since three successful hits takes you from red to full health. Accuracy is useful, but if you're on large teams you don't need to be capped or anything, since hitting 10 isn't much better than hitting 3. The end cost is brutal.

Any pool attacks make you put away the mace, even Kick, which doesn't make much sense.

[ QUOTE ]
Hey guys, which primary do you feel benefits the most from the /eng secondary with boost range and power boost? I looking to play 95% pve and on teams when ever possible thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that Assault Rifle benefits the most from Boost Range, with its 3 cones. After the recent buffs AR does solid single target damage (check the DpA on Burst, Slug and Buckshot now!), and Boost Range lets you more easily use all 3 cones without moving around to optimize them. AR/Em is a great teaming build.

Sonic or Electric benefit most from Power Boost, but Sonic/EM is a better solo than team build, and the recent nerf to Power Boost makes Elec/Em not the end drain machine it once was. Ice is also nice for boosted holds.

Fire/Em is the classic blapper build to take advantage of the fast, hard hitting melee attacks, especially Energy Punch and Bone Smasher. BU + Aim + Blaze, Energy Punch, and Bone Smasher and pretty much any boss is down, and you still have 5 seconds left in BU+Aim for whatever else you want. Fire/Em is a solid hybrid build is good at single target damage, area damage, and blapping potential, with decent mitigation for soloing.

Fire/Elec can be a more damaging blapper, though, and Fire/Fire is the ultimate AoE blapper (not a build if you hate debt!).

Your math is good...but it's real world math, not CoH math. Around here, the ToHit is checked against all the targets and you hit up to the cap. So if you're slotted even decently for accuracy and you fire into a spawn with say 20 targets, hitting 10 for full damage is a near-certainty.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm coming back to the game after several months away, but I remember my AR/Energy was able to BR -> BU -> M30 -> FA to take out groups with little-to-no retaliation.

Now, what's all this about Ignite with a 20-second recharge?

[/ QUOTE ]

January 22nd patch....
# Assault Rifle - Buckshot - Reduced animation time to 0.9 seconds.
# Assault Rifle - Beanbag - Reduced animation time to 0.9 seconds.
# Assault Rifle - Sniper Rifle - Reduced animation time to 3.67. (Interrupt time not changed)
# Assault Rifle - Flame thrower - Reduced animation time to 2.33 seconds and DOT effect now starts immediately.
# Assault Rifle - Ignite - Increased recharge to 20 seconds.
# Assault Rifle - Full Auto - Reduced animation time to 4 seconds.

Ignite got hit fairly hard, but especially for AR/EM it was a huge buff overall. You can now easily get all your AoEs into a BU cycle, FA, Flamethrower, Buckshot, & M30, any sequence you like best.

[ QUOTE ]
That explains why AoE's in general have target caps, but not why cones have lesser caps than targetted AoE or PBAoE attacks. Anyone know?

[/ QUOTE ]

Cones in general seem to have better numbers for damage, and almost always better damage per second, & damage per end. The tradeoff is greater difficulty to line up, and lower target caps

If that's the plan, it's not followed here since RoA does better damage and DpS than FA.

[ QUOTE ]
you need the patience of a saint with /EM. You spend your time waiting for boost range just to get those long and short cones in AR matched up to something reasonable.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can get boost range within a couple seconds of permanent with SOs, with IOs it's dead simple; my AR/EM isn't noted for his patience.

It's nice to be capped vs. +3s...if I run the numbers right, you have a base chance to hit of 48% against +3s, with unslotted Rage (single stacked) and Invincibility (vs one foe) adding 22% to that. Unless I'm doing the math wrong, you'd need 36% additional accuracy to be capped vs. +3s, and 56% to be capped vs. +4s.

So even with the lower acc bonus, even Jab would be capped at 95% chance to hit against a +4 boss, assuming Rage and Invincibility.

You should be fine.

[ QUOTE ]
I have trouble seeing how RoA is not simply superior

[/ QUOTE ]

BU+Aim+RoA is better than BU+FA. Except on the occasions that things get moved or largely defeated before RoA lands, which happens frustratingly often, but not often enough to make FA and its narrow cone better.

Add in Flamethrower, though, which is 2/3 of FA's damage (and all fire) on a 20 second timer with a very wide cone, and AR as a set starts to look a bit better. Total AoE damage over time is very competitive.

AR's fine. Would I trade Ignite in for Aim on my AR/Energy? Sure. Especially on that build. But the buffs to AR's cast times make it a very good set now, in the discussion for best AoE damage primary.

Just a note, Build Up is not omitted from AR, Aim is. BU is available in most secondaries.

Ignite is more-or-less the replacement for Aim, it was almost worth it before Ignite's recharge got heavily nerfed. But not quite worth it even then IMO.

Basically the same information is now on your combat attributes as well.

I find Willpower sturdier than Invulnerability, before IOs. After IOs, I think Invulnerability is tougher against most damage types, though WP clearly kicks Invuln's butt vs. psi damage. Neither is as tough as Stone in Granite armor...though Granite armor does diddly vs. psi damage.

If you look at combat attributes or City of Data, you'll see that your Taunt aura (Rise to the Challenge) in WP is dramatically weaker than Invincibility's ability to taunt. Anything not in your reach for two seconds that you didn't use Taunt on has a good chance of forgetting all about you. WP can be tougher, but "tanking", holding aggro, requires more active work.

I'm not sure why you feel that a level 35-ish tank should be able to take on a dozen level 54 bosses, probably set to extreme, in the MA without support. About the only way to do it is what you've done, sacrificing all of your offense for all the defense you can muster...something I personally find boring but ymmv.

If you do want to do that, the stone tank is more survivable versus some of the uber-nasty customer critters. But you give up a lot more than looks to get it, and you don't get that survivability until level 32-33, not much earlier than you are now.

If you saw a Granite tank "walking" through stuff like you've described, either they've invested heavily in set bonuses or there was a kin on the team. A stone tank with Granite and Rooted crawls along at about 3 mph. Your powers recharge about as fast, 65% slower than normal, and they do 30% less damage.

You're very tough, very hard to kill, but there's a significant price tag to that durability that goes well beyond appearances. Lots of stone tanks won't even try anything extended unless there's a kin on the team giving non-stop Speed Boost.

I haven't found Invuln to be squishy, but I don't do a lot of AE. My level 41 Inv/Ice tank has about 20% of the first debt badge. And I find him much more fun to play than my stone tank...you can't kill the stone tank, but he's a bit boring to play since he's so limited in what he can do other than stand there not dying.