PleaseRecycle

If we're being honest it's also worth noting that the first set of brute ATOs only helps them generate more fury, accelerating them along their trajectory toward the same old damage cap. Scrappers and stalkers gain effects that effectively increase their damage caps by increasing the number of critical hits they generate. This is fine for brutes most of the time in normal play but in ideal high end circumstances it is an advantage for non-brutes.

I won't say that the lower HP isn't an issue for stalkers who are into things like soloing lambda crates, but I would say that it's a surmountable problem. Stalkers actually have more HP than my ranged fort, for instance, but I solo crates on my fort all the time. A SJ stalker is going to be doing considerably more damage, but with less defense to back it up. Really it's all just relative tradeoffs. Damage and survivability exist as spectra and if you want to make something work you can virtually always do so with sufficient investment and skill.

For instance, if you can get a /wp stalker to within some chunk of Barrier of the incarnate softcap, that's probably at least thirty seconds of basically unfettered insane single target damage. That crate or containment tube is not going to be putting up much of a fight in that time frame. In some ways stalkers are the best willpower option for this because instead of lots of regen they get a powerful heal. When you're trying to burst down a single target regen isn't really what you're after.

Of course that was just one example but it's a place where I would say the stalker beats the scrapper or brute. Where do the scrapper or brute beat the stalker? It isn't with aoe, willpower doesn't get a damage aura and street justice doesn't lose any aoe in stalker form. The only real mechanical differences are the lack of a taunt aura and the exchange of regen for heal. Oh yeah, and stalkers don't get quick recovery, that's kind of lame, but they also have one less toggle to run.

I dunno, something to think about at least. Personally I rank damage higher as a late-game build priority than survivability by a moderate amount and if I were going to roll this combination I wouldn't hesitate to stalk it up.

Have you considered SJ/WP on a stalker? I've got a SJ/Regen brute and while it's quite sturdy the damage isn't what I was hoping for, shall we say. SJ is better on scrappers, if you ask me, but it's better than that on stalkers. You lose no aoe and you gain a really good single target attack, just the kind of thing the set sort of needs. You also lose the taunt aura but on the bright side you only have to make it up to 50+3 before you can make up for that with hybrid!

I just hope they hurry up and get rid of confront ASAP. It's impossible to conceive of any scrapper wanting a way to manage aggro and eight-power primaries would be an improvement in comparison to the blight upon mankind that is confront.

Did you notice the "min" part of min/max? It has an important role in understanding the term!

Warkupo makes a fine case for staff stalkers, but while we're at it I shall attempt to convince you of the converse: staff is better on non-stalkers due to staff mastery and innocuous strikes. The latter is a very good cone that lets you have a gapless aoe attack chain with sufficient recharge. That is, as they say, pretty dang cool. It makes more sense to me to go all in on aoe since staff is either a decent single target set with good aoe in stalker form or a mediocre single target set with fantastic aoe for everyone else.

The other thing stalkers give up on is a large part of staff's incomparable survivability. Form of the soul gives you essentially unlimited endurance when coupled with good slotting, but using sky splitter with three stacks of soul gives you a significant boost to both recovery and regen. You have this on top of your defense from guarded spin, on top of your various knockdown, and on top of your ability to run as many toggles as you want.

Do you want to give much of that up for assassin's strike? It's a great attack but I don't think it's the definitive way to play a staff character, more like the DVD-only alternate ending.

I was gonna say, I didn't think I was posting about this a week ago...

While you are looking to ageless, Werner, now that I actually have a claws/dark I am thinking about rebirth! Probably one of life's more minor ironies.

I like the part where you punch the robot.

Adieu, Moderator 09. I'll miss the comforting presence your name always seemed to have on the "last ten visitors" list in my profile.

Great news, Ultimus. A_F and J_B have been hired as the new development leads at Paragon Studios. Everything's getting buffed forever.

Since ambush farming is apparently no longer in vogue water should look more competitive than it otherwise may have. Why? If you're approaching spawns you have a much better chance to take advantage of water's very good cone. AR and DP can farm more on the strength of their spherical taoes and their pbaoes, which eliminate some of the margin for error. My guess is that water needs its cone as geyser is an every-couple-spawns tool rather than every spawn. Just a guess, though, maybe whirlpool has a bigger impact than I'm imagining.

That makes a lot of sense, Vel. It also explains why Super Strength, with its many soft and hard controls, is virtually ignored as a brute primary.

Thanks for the explanation, that is going to have a huge impact on the direction of my build!

Did someone say buff AR?! Buff AR! Devs hate AR! Did you know that super strength has more than seven million times more melee DPS than AR? This is such a slap in the face!

I don't even know how absorb actually works, strictly speaking, but it seemed like it might be wise to go water/ice to diversify the mitigation even further. Is absorb protected by resistance but not by defense or something?

In an alternate universe where Synapse and Arbiter Hawk couldn't see that it was the same three people griping about sets being underpowered for not being titan weapons every single time a new set comes out this might be pretty persuasive stuff. Good luck, friends!

Limited edition hologram cover with a free press-on tattoo included.

The only real way they'd make money in the absence of Going Rogue-style expansions would be from users purchasing a new-accounts-only bundle or from DLC packs along the lines of the old Super Boosters. That's why I think it'd be unlikely that either NCSoft or Valve would be terribly interested in such a partnership: the game has moved away from that DLC model. Without either a trickle of small releases like that to periodically generate interest or a "full version" to tantalizingly discount there just isn't a lot in it for anyone.

Nal, that is entirely, 100% false. Valve has absolutely no control over the content of anything carried on steam apart from their right to remove a product entirely at their discretion. Neither do they "siphon off in-game purchases." They would get a ~30% cut from the sales of the City of Heroes Starter Pack. They would get nothing from in-game sales. I suspect you believe that due to EA's bizarre press release flailings when they were being asked why they removed most of their games from steam to coincide with the EA store's rebranding; you might want to read a bit more on that because, shockingly, it turned out EA were full of it.

It would bring access to what is rapidly approaching five million concurrent users a day. In addition to an initial jolt of interest from offering some "discounted" ~$10 starter bundle thing, they'd then have access to future exposure upon the release of content packs or through steam's extremely frequent sales. The most obvious issue is that CoH doesn't really do "expansions" anymore and they went pretty far out of their way to ensure the only thing you could really sell externally to the in-game store would be bundles of points. That's the main reason why I would be surprised to see CoH reappear on steam. Stranger things have happened, though, and steam's free to play selection seems to be burgeoning (though mainly with truly awful looking purpose-built cash grabs).