PleaseRecycle

If I were going to make a new ice armor character it would be a stalker. In fact, I am going to make a new ice armor character and it is going to be a stalker, just waiting on I22. The reasoning is thus: tanker ice armor is easy to softcap. In fact, it is too easy to softcap. You hit the softcap with preliminary slotting and you're left chasing... recharge? EA is practically perma out of the box, hoarfrost is easy to perma, and hibernate is a waste of space. That last point is the real key because stalkers don't get hibernate in ice armor as they have it in some epic pool. Its replacement, icy bastion, is an amazing power. It's in the vein of moment of glory except I would call it superior to moment of glory due to its doubled duration and the fact that none of its buffs are overkill. Now if tankers got that that would be one thing, but as it stands today if you want the optimal ice armor experience it's hard not to give stalkers a look.

My fortunata's build was requested so I'm posting it here. I don't use mids, but using mids would really detract from the effect in this instance. Basically I see it as a celebration of the excesses of super packs. I spent no more than 1.5 billion at the market, instead buying many of the expensive recipes directly with the mountain of reward merits I had available. This was far easier than my typical building process as I never had to wait for a low level recipe bid to fill.

The results speak for themselves. Hasten is ~6 seconds off perma which I don't care about because mind link is permanent. Defense is softcapped at all times and incarnate softcapped with mind link. 85% psionic resistance is handy, and my entire attack chain works from 96 feet. Not pictured are cardiac and rebirth, but who cares, you can't use enhancement boosters on those anyway.

I am of two minds about this build. Should I be able to get purple performance without (many) purples thanks to the magic of real money? The answer to that is moot because I already have. At the same time, it's tons of fun to play and building it was so much easier than normal that it's hard to say relying fully on the market was a better state of affairs. I estimate that anyone who is a tier 9 VIP should be able to come up with a build like this for the AT of their choice with ~$50 of super packs, using the veteran tokens they get from buying those points to supplement their enhancement boosters if necessary. You'll be left with a pile of ATOs, merits and other delights to use on other characters as well. Without further ado, a pretty solid fortunata build:

http://i.imgur.com/JOUDe.jpg

For reasons that are beyond me the Kismet +6% Tohit enhancement has never been renamed to reflect its actual effect. It has never given accuracy and does not seem to be intended to.

Well now that that's fixed I am stuck in gold name mode. I can change it and it will last as long as thirty seconds before going right back to yellow. I do not wish my name to be golden. Alack.

The fortunata I talked myself into in this thread just hit 46 today. Obviously I don't even have any purples slotted yet and it just makes a mockery of pretty much anything. The aoe control is valuable but the real strength of the AT is that your single target chain contains a hold, you have an excellent single target confuse for instant helpers in nearly any tough spot, and half of your aoe (or all of your aoe, depending on where you put the AT proc) inflicts soft control as well. To get full time softcapped defense on top of that and complete status protection on top of that is just silly.

The one weakness I've run into thus far is autohit enemies, villain WWD1.2 being what springs immediately to mind. Solution: do not solo villain WWD1.2. Soon, the real solution (well, not at level 30, but y'know) will be radial rebirth. It's so rarely a problem that just having a green or two on hand easily takes care of it however.

I used to think it was annoying how often they threw Infernal at you redside, but on a fortunata... Nice pets, I think I'll take them.

Not only would ice armor be better for scrappers than ninjitsu, it seems theoretically possible that they'd be inclined to give scrappers ice melee as well. Presumably this would entail improvements for ice melee, and if that happened it would be a win for both scrappers and tankers.

Ah, I don't often keep up with those things, my mistake then. However I still kind of hope that the next super pack has something similarly new and shiny, which more ATOs at this point wouldn't exactly be.

Not to rain on the parade but it might be premature to assume that there will be new sets of ATOs. It's true that the super pack is referred to as "Super Pack #1," but its full name is "Super Pack #1: Heroes and Villains." To me that says that the ATOs were essentially the special theme for this pack and it will be something different next time around. I've been wrong before and I'm not saying it could never happen, just don't get your hopes too high for it happening soon.

SlickRiptide, I think you have to assume that the police just throw up their hands at some point and say "heroes will be heroes!" in the world of CoH, otherwise players would have an awful lot to answer for as well. Like how about Janet Kellum's arc where you allegedly become the city's most wanted criminal after Countess Crey frames you: feel free to walk right up to a police drone or into a police station, or city hall, nobody seems to be stressing about it. Or how about redeeming a villain via tips? Oh, you're nice now? Well, you did murder hundreds if not thousands of people, but we'll call it good.

Oh my god, she's right... we have to warn Sutter before part seven comes out!

Hmm, I guess I just don't agree that whoever beats Wade would have to obtain his powers. After all, we've seen the lengths to which he had to go to absorb powers in the first place, indeed they've really talked up how hard it is to steal someone's powers. Villains did get a taste of Synapse's powers but that was due to the presence of the obelisk.

The way I see it going down, Wade is going to be a big menacing floaty dude who may or may not have desk-poundingly annoying stats and the culmination of his threat will be that he'll be intended to be an extremely hard fight. Probably he'll summon some EBs that need to be culled. Maybe this is just wishful thinking because that's my idea of a good time, but I would be super amazed if they didn't let player heroes as well as villains bask in the glow of taking Wade out given the trajectory of the arc to this point.

I agree with you, I think it makes sufficient sense... if you run the villain version. It definitely seems like this won't be the last we hear of Wade's BS Mastery powers from people who only run the hero version though, and I can't blame them.

My impression was that all of the effort that normally goes into mission design for the SSAs instead went into Penelope's psi melee power set. The instant she started attacking I thought, "Wait a minute, this is that set that I voted for in that poll all those years ago and they never gave us!"

I'm totally willing to forgive this transgression, devs, for the low low price of player access to psi melee.

As for "expecting Wade to help," it's important to note that that caption is not spoken by Psyche, but by the Aurora fragment. "Aurora" was explicitly told that Wade would help her be free and then found out that Wade is perfectly happy to simply kill her off along with Psyche. Naive on "Aurora's" part, yes, but not as ludicrous as Psyche thinking Wade was a cool dude.

The part I found odd was that villains get a gigantic information pile at the end that heroes completely miss out on. That's not incredibly different from the rest of the SSA thus far, but they are sort of running out of space to clue heroes in on the "actual events" of the story if they intend to do that at all. Then again, in part 5 heroes got three wordy clues that villains apparently missed due to a bug, so...

I agree with the sentiment that part 6 is interesting in story terms but the gameplay is pretty weak. Even if it makes sense for nemesis to be attacking portal corp, why is it that the player has to be the one to stop them? Even if they somehow razed portal corp to the ground, which they totally wouldn't, that has nothing to do with your actual objective.

The third mission is fine in villain form but for heroes, aaaghhhhhh. I can see why they make you run back - if Tyrka could be pulled to Manticore, why wouldn't they fight? Its actual presentation is pretty damn painful though.

In terms of re-running for prizes, I wouldn't even consider that on the hero version, it is by far the longest SSA yet. The villain version would be a credible candidate for fastest of the lot, though, especially since you can keep incarnate powers for it.

At any rate, I'm not leveling a scrapper right now so what the hell do I care. It seems the correct course of action would be to slot the brute set on my brute and enjoy it while it lasts!