Seawalker

Arachnos soldier - Huntsman with a touch of Bane and more alternate identities than you can shake a stick at.

I don't know if you are still reading this, but your post and character got me interested in the Soldier. I diverged from your approach because I found that against elite bosses I wanted a better single target damage option, and the sudden "appear out of nowhere" stalker nature of a Wolf soldier with bane tricks seemed to work best for the story-arc-exploration that I was doing.

As things turned out, my instincts were to go offense-heavy first, so I didn't have a lot of the leveling issues you seemed to have. Two slots in endurance and keeping a half dozen blue inspirations around covered most things, as his fights were usually sharp and short...the blues for the rare fight that lasted any length of time. I imagine his stealth capability helped with Endurance, he could skip a lot of meaningless fighting and recharge on the way.

I didn't cap ranged defense till the 40s and was relying on two small purples when I was worried about the counterattack (mostly for elite boss fights). There was a major power-up at level 38 with the call reinforcements power, but otherwise it was a fairly steady progression...as you say he started pretty good and just got steadily better. I had a lot more attacks than your build, so my need for recharge was less. (I still ended up with something like 68% global recharge without Haste included, and near-perma-haste, so it isn't like I skimped). I also didn't take the second layer of tactics, preferring to get a little +accuracy out of I/Os to make up for it, which saved a bit of endurance.

That said, when I went incarnate, the alpha slot went to cardiac and it pretty much reduced the need for blues to fights when my endurance was being debuffed. The ability to do sustained full power attacks without inspirations was a sign that, yes, Incarnate was significantly better than just plain level 50.

Anyway...moving to the real point of this post...

When the death of CoH was announced I looked at all my characters. 3 Masterminds, 1 Tanker,1 controller, 1 Blaster, 2 Kheldians and one Corrupter...and I realized that my soldier in many ways had the best of all of them.

He could cap on ranged defense, and had solid defenses in other positions, capping with only a purple inspiration. Not quite as durable as the tanker but close.

His raw offense was similar to the blaster - including the more potent close in melee attacks backing up ranged and aoe punch. The double-assault from leadership more or less matched the blaster inherent bonuses, especially as issue 24 was never coming out.

He had the key "debuff resistance" capability of my corrupter, without the fiddly need to mess with secondary powers to defend himself against the counterattack...plus straight up damage similar to what the corrupter was doing only after he'd taken down half the enemy health.

He had stealth built in, and a nice alpha-strike like a stalker....not as good as a stalker, but his performance the rest of the fight was much, much better.

He had team buffs superior to my masterminds or my corrupter (although he lacked the control of the latter, he despised web grenades as "for wimps")

And finally...as the pets started to accumulate, he began to remind me a bit of a mastermind, although with less control and much more of his power concentrated in himself. But the first pets I got turned those elite boss fights from touch-and-go into "I'll win if I'm not stupid".

Most importantly, he'd gained a personality. Maybe it is that most of the villain content and alignment content came later, but I found content created after Going Rogue to be a lot more emotionally engaging then the early stuff. Because he did a lot of it, he started gaining personality. So when it became clear that the 30+ story arc content didn't support more than a couple characters in terms of leveling to 50 he got the nod...eventually wrapping all the way around in alignment to see the most plots.

And...I finished in time for the incarnate content too. He's now 50+3, played about half the incarnate trials, all of the solo incarnate content and really, is the reason I got to really explore this game in the handful of weeks I had left, when the game death was announced and I was still working through the 25-30 content.


Along the way he invented many "secret identities", although once he became incarnate he stopped bothering, no longer fearing Recluse or anyone else.


The many incarnations of my soldier:

Styelok (Russian for Deadshot) - Arachnos armor until he was no longer under Lord Recluse's authority...whereupon he switched to casual street clothes and weapons that could be concealed under a flack jacket. Villain by reputation, although he moved to Rogue after saving the world a couple times as an Incarnate. As an Incarnate he'd occasionally wear the Arachnos uniform if he was doing a mission for somebody in Arachnos, as a courtesy to show that for now, he's temporarily under their authority. There was an awful period between 25 and 30 where he got drunk and had the crab legs installed. His superiors thought it was hilarious. He had to take a break from identity switching until he did enough favors for a freakshow doc to get them off.

Deadshot - dressed in a faux Longbow Armor, he was a flying assault rifle "hero" of the vigilante sort, with a rep weaker than Styelok (as he couldn't use the mace or the pets, but had really good flying powers instead). Used whenever my soldier was in a mission in direct conflict with Arachnos. He was mostly seen terrorizing Rogue Isles, although there were incidents in Paragon city, most notably rescuing an actual overzealous Longbow agent with a similar rep from legal punishment, just to firm up his fake identity.

Timor (Fear in Latin) - his Midnighter identity, with rogue reputation. Did most magical quests with this role, or explicitly Midnighter oriented quests. Uses a similar disguise spell as Darren Wade provided in the Midnighter infiltration mission. For reasons not clear, the Hat of Disguise which is the focus of the spell is a bowler hat. As the soldier eventually got Darkness based patron powers and Fire/Healing incarnate powers from a certain goddess of magic, for favors done, he could do a pretty convincing fake mage act. But he claimed to be darkness/illusion, and that the Arachnos weapons in particular had strong totemic value to reinforce his illusions, and blasting with raw magic was a crude fallback. He even managed to duplicate the pets without blowing his identity with Aracnos, with help from an insect-themed mad scientist and a tanker associate who dressed up in a Widow outfit. The tendency of things and people to teleport away when badly damaged simulated illusions "failing" pretty well.

Slugger (a pun on clubbing people with mace and shooting them with "slugs") had a red-white-and-blue garish sports-style armor and was a hero identity he retreated into for a while when Ghost Widow was pissed at him for um...events in the early patron arc. This identity was seen as similar to Timor and Styelok in threat level, but the inability to mix in the arachnos bots or magical attacks limited his peak performance. Still it was good enough to team up with the Freedom Phalanx solo adventures and beat up various Praetorian elite bosses in the 40-50 Portal corp stories.

I felt the Dark Astoria incarnate missions really fit his emerging character. Styelok is a bad guy, but he's in it mostly for the challenge...he isn't a sadist or someone who wants to destroy the world, and respects someone who he defeats, but gives him a hard time...or who backs him down with a convincing threat. This makes him able to cheerfully do heroic things as long as it is "fun". So he actually had no real regrets about anything he'd ever done, aside from one betrayal that got patched up later. That means he's a tough nut for that elder god to crack out of the box. So he seemed like a convincing choice for an incarnate to be tapped to try to end that threat. As for the other incarnate content, there were also a lot of ex-praetorians in his supergroup, and the widow and seer pets he eventually acquired were actually those characters "sidekicking" up to help when he did incarnate trials back in Praetoria.

Anyway...thank you for your inspiration. I'm pretty sure none of my other characters would have had nearly as much fun and success exploring the level 30-50 and incarnate content in a mere 3 months...and I would never have even looked at the Soldier without this thread.

I'm now leaving this game with a sense I explored it pretty well, and got a lot of what there was out of it, even though I had not played it all that long. You did that.

To clarify with energy, here's how it helps (at least with my limited experience with fire/energy)

1. Melee attacks all do some kind of mitigation (1st tier does very reliable knockback, 2nd and third tier have stunning effects, although not reliably, capstone does both stun and knockback. There is also a low damage, reliable stun). Something annoying gets close to me, I punch it and it leaves me alone for a while. I just use the first and third tier attacks myself, but tastes vary.

2. Build up starting from level 4 = bigger alpha strike = less live enemies to hit you back.

3. Power boost multiplies the effect of any defense you have briefly, giving you an "oh crap" button

4. Boost range can be made permanent, allowing you to start the fight from a lot farther away when terrain permits, plus greatly improving your ability to hit everything with your cone attack in the early going.

5. Conserve power lets you pretty much do whatever you want without having to worry about the blue bar for a few minutes. This usually translates into "you get to keep killing things that might have hurt you because you ran out of end", or keep more defensive toggles up.

This is the kind of thing you get with Blasters. You don't tend to get +resist, +def or healing (or if you do, you get maybe 1-2 powers along those lines). What you get is powers that add some control, often melee range powers. (eg, /fire gets a hold as its tier 1 power, several "it sucks to be near you" melee and pbaoe damage powers, a "damage people and get endurance" power and a "fear/slow/avoid" pbaoe toggle)

This is probably why it is so difficult to defense cap a blaster, is the devs assumed that these secondary sets would have enough mitigation that they wouldn't need softcapped defenses or resistances. This is similar to why the TacOps Lt Minion (Mercenaries) is considered inferior to the Thugs or Robots Lt, which provide straight up +defense modifiers to henchmen instead of random stuns/webs/etc.

Most people who play this game seem to prefer things that give +defense to say, an aura that causes fear. This is likely because in the game, +defense and +resist not only work predictably, they work better to keep damage off you, especially if you ratchet up the numbers and power of opponents.

If you are going tankermind it isn't as important to cap the protector bots.

YOUR defenses are what matters. Anything that gets through will just bypass all the defenses and resistances of the bots anyway.

Getting them as high as you can easily do is good, for AOE protection and for when they draw aggro. But you don't have to go crazy if you intend to pull aggro onto yourself as much as possible.

Right. Even when you softcap your bots defenses, the little guys will get oneshotted in the 5-9% (depending on opponent) that they get hit. Mostly they won't QUITE be oneshotted (they actually do have some resistances and most incoming attacks come from minions) and you can heal them, but some mobs hit like a truck.

The one exception to this is the level 26 bot. It'll have more hitpoints than you do...and more defenses because your forcefields don't protect yourself plus it has some innate resistances.

If you've got the bots softcapped though, even AOEs won't kill all of them and you have the luxury to resummon and rebuff the ones killed by lucky hits.

Do watch out for things that lack an attack roll. If your bots are standing on burn patches and you don't pay attention, you can find yourself standing next to your last protector bot, ordering it into the fight while you flee.

Bots/FF is a very good set to learn the game and mastermind mechanics in particular.

You need one bind to begin with, a "focus fire and kill what I'm pointing at". If you don't have that, you can't kill fast enough. Also put the "follow passive" button on your tray. This lets you yank your robots back when they are chasing somebody, or they are standing in fire.

Slotting it is fairly forgiving, but here are some simple goals for slots:

Tier 1 and Tier 2 forcefields - add 2 slots to each (total 3)
Assault Bot - at least 5 slots
Protector bot - 6 slots
Take Leadership->Maneuvers and add 2 slots to it (total 3) before level 20
Add 2 slots to stamina before level 20
take Dispersion bubble at 20 and give it 2 more slots.

The forcefield attacks don't need more than the default slot. They're high accuracy and don't really do damage. Put accuracy in and call it done. I do like detention field for reasons I'll explain below.

Tactics is highly recommended by level 14-16, it helps a lot with your tier 1 robots losing levels. It can also take up to 2 slots. Take medicine->aid other before taking repair robot (the latter is longer range, but really only useful to heal the assault bot, which you don't get until 26. You'll still have a few powers left

The reason for the slots in those powers is that with those slots and only single origins (which you can buy in a store at level 22), you softcap your tier 1 robots (and anyone else you team with) at level 22 by just putting 3 defense enhancements. At level 24, your protectorbots willl also be softcapped (ok, not vs psionic that doesn't have a position, but you still have 15% defense there) and your dispersion field also gives pretty good status protection to anyone in it.

For your bots, the tier 1 bot gets 2 accuracy/3 damage (essentially maximizing both even with the level loss) and your protector bot gets 1 accuracy, 2 damage and 3 defense.

The reason you are slotting stamina is those leadership toggles and dispersion field are huge endurance hogs. With 3 endurance single origins in stamina, you can run them and still operate normally - it is more efficient to slot them than to add endurance reducing slots to the actual toggles.

So what do you do in combat?

Before the fight, scan the enemy and decide what is dangerous. As a rule, something easy to kill and annoying gets targeted by the bots first, where tougher critters with big attacks (Lts, Bosses) get controlled. Anything with an AOE attack before level 22 is very dangerous and should be a control target.

1. Direct your bots, picking targets and getting them to focus fire. You want to make a macro or keybind that sets them to "attack defensive". A "follow defensive" is nice, but all the complex bodyguarding stuff that the mastermind guides teach is fairly optional for Bots/FF, because the bots get so durable with all the layered forcefields that the mastermind isn't really called upon to tank for them. I recommend experimenting with the bodyguard modes, you'll have the luxury to do so because Bots/FF is fairly stress free most of the time. Likewise play with the goto and stay commands and learn how to really get your pets to do what you want them to do, because Bots/FF is really not the kind of build that causes the mastermind himself to ever be in much danger.

2. When the bots are shooting at the first target on your kill list, slam the dangerous enemy with your tier 1 forcefield knockback attack. Very few things are resistant to knockback and it recharges fast enough that you can pretty much keep one enemy on its back the whole fight if you want to. You can also rotate it around, accepting that the bad guys will not be totally suppressed, but probably mitigating more damage overall.

Note...keep an eye on whomever your bots are shooting. You want to direct the bots to focus fire somebody else when they're done, rather than let them randomly pick targets.

3. If there is somebody really dangerous, and your bots have a lot of minions and such to clean up, put it in a detention field. This is a weird attack, and nothing really has any defenses against it. Some critters it won't immobilize, but they'll still be unable to attack or be attacked. Bosses won't stay bubbled long, but it can buy a breather. My primary target for this in the early levels was the exploding corpses, but anything you find dangerous or annoying enough to lock out of a fight can be bubbled. You can't turn the bubble off, so it is kind of annoying if you clean up everything else first and have to wait to kill the last guy.

4. Heal your bots as needed. Use green inspirations at first, then medicine-aid-other or repair bots if you get those powers later.

5. Use temporary powers to add a little to the dps if this is getting dull. I keep getting all sorts of weird attacks from missions (currently I have a beanbag gun...go figure). Some of the paragon rewards give attacks, as do some badge achievements, plus there are various inventions.


I don't recommend personal force field. You will be nearly softcapped by level 24 anyway and all it does is add more defense. You are not normally a target in any event, indeed if they start focus firing on you, make sure your robots aren't in passive mode and try to stay alive until your bots draw some aggro. If YOU die, all your bots die. If THEY die, you can resummon them in combat. Personal force field also blocks all of your leadership and mastermind buffs to your minions, which is pretty crippling. Finally you can't summon with that toggle on. Use that power slot for something else.

My experience is that the bots handle just about anything fine in the 1-22 range except massed AOE or elite bosses. Ok there was a "bag of gears" incident where a zillion minions chased me out of the building. Most of those fights you can still win if you just watch your own health bar, don't stand in fire, and keep summoning, equipping and force-fielding bots as they die. (this is where you will eat blue inspirations. Save a couple just in case). You can often just run away from a fight you no longer think you can win, sacrificing your bots to keep the enemy b usy.

At level 12, go to the store appropriate to your origin and load up on dual origins. You may go for more endurance reducers here than just piling on the defense, as until you get near cap, defense isn't as effective and your slots in stamina also won't be as effective as with single origins...so your toggles may be causing issues if you don't slot some for reduced endurance.

If you get bored with bots, because it is too easy, then try a more challenging mastermind. Or play a glass cannon blaster if you want an andrenaline rush.