StrykerX

I've been playing CoH a looooong time, but one thing I've never really done is to make a character that can just wade into any horde of mobs and start "arresting" them... I usually play Blasters or other squishy types or MMs (which can be tough but have a completely different feel) and overall I think my toughest non-MM is a Bane Spider.

What I'm really looking for is something that can solo pretty much any non-AV /GM spawn. I don't want to restrict myself to only characters with regen debuffs by tossing AVs or GMs in the mix and honestly I decided after about my third solo AV kill that this just takes way too long to be worth bothering with. So I guess I'm looking for something that can handle:

• +4/x8 spawns with bosses
• all enemy types. Rularuu, PPD, Warworks, Carnies, Malta, you name it.
• preferably a melee AT rather than a MM or Illusion Controller
• ideally something with decent damage output rather than a Tanker
• Heavily IOed (naturally), but with no purples or PvP IOs since I just don't have that much inf to spend on one character.

I have a Bots/Traps MM that can solo most things (though not always at +4) but I actually don't have a lot of experience with Brutes or Scrappers and that's what I'd really like if there's a combo tough enough... my only real concern is that defense based characters can get overwhelmed by large numbers of +4s and most resist sets have at least one hole (I can't see an /Invul Brute surviving against Seers or other psi-heavy groups at +4/x8).

My initial thoughts were a Stone/Dark Brute or maybe Stone/WP. Any suggestions would be appreciated... maybe there's a Scrapper combo out there that can handle this sort of thing, or maybe I need to be thinking Tanker. The main thing I want is the ability to set my difficulty to +4/x8/Bosses/No AVs and solo any mission against any faction in the game without turning it down. I'm pretty sure my Bots/Traps MM could do exactly that if I sank a couple more billion inf into his build, but I'd love to do it on a melee character. Or a Blaster, but even IOs and Incarnate powers can only do so much...

Dual Pistols is fairly weak on Blasters. It looks cool and can mow down mobs when the mini-nuke is up, but for most spawns you're going to be doing mediocre damage (not horrible, but a bit below average) with weak secondary effects or average damage with no secondary effect... in practice you'll either always use Incendiary Ammo or you'll usually use Incendiary and sometimes use Standard for the KB. Adding Devices to an already low-to-medium damage primary will result in one of the lowest damage Blaster combinations possible (except every few spawns when you can use Hail of Bullets) unless you want to go really slow and use lots of Trip Mines. That's a perfectly valid way to play, but it's not beginner-friendly and doesn't mesh well with teams so I wouldn't recommend it.

Defenders and Corruptors tend to do better with DP because they get stronger debuffs, so Chem and Cryo rounds actually become at least marginally useful instead of being pointless like they are on Blasters. Since the whole swappable ammo thing is one of DP's main features I prefer to use it on ATs that can actually justify using all the ammo types though... if you just want to shoot flaming bullets at things and look cool doing it then the Blaster route works fine. (Ok, honestly that doesn't sound so bad...) My suggestion would be a DP/Traps Corruptor though... Traps is far better than Devices and Corruptors still do decent damage while also getting more utility out of the various ammo types. The nice thing about Traps is that you really don't have to worry about teammates... just drop a Triage Beacon if it looks like you'll be fighting in one spot for a while and spend the rest of your time shooting and dropping mines and mortars. Plus having FFG to provide mez protection makes for a much more newbie-friendly build.

You'll probably want a Defender. The higher -resist in your blasts will add up to more damage on teams and should give you enough of a boost when solo to make up for no Scourge. With a support power set that also offers -resist the Defender looks even better.

Why not have both options? I'd love to see an additional branch of Lore pets that are weaker but longer lasting (maybe permanent at T3 and having some overlap at T4 to make replacing defeated pets easier). That way we can take the current high spike damage variety or get a modest full-time boost, depending on what we need.

Try a Bots MM. They tend to be a bit slow (but sturdy) before level 32, but once you get the second upgrade you get a truly impressive amount of AoE. Fire, explosions, photon grenades, and a ton of lasers all tearing into a spawn makes a heck of a pretty light show. Go Bots/Traps and you can add to the fun with Trip Mines and Poison Traps, plus the Photon Grenade power isn't horrible (it's lousy damage, but at least it's lousy damage to a bunch of targets).

Another fun combo is a Plant/Storm Controller. With good recharge you can keep Carrion Creepers around full time and spam Roots to do decent AoE damage while Tornadoes and Lightning Storms blast the spawn and they sit there shooting at each other thanks to Seeds of Confusion. It's not as fast as some other sets but it's a lot of fun and it can handle pretty tough spawns (+1/x8/bosses was what I ran on mine).

Of course if you really want AoE goodness and don't mind spending a lot of inf, just get a SS Brute with insanely high recharge and sit there Foot Stomping every few seconds until everything dies.

Dual Pistols is fairly low damage (on average) set, so you won't get that "OMG" feeling that you do from something like Fire. The crashless nuke is nice but you can't use it every spawn so at least half the time (more like 2/3 or more without a high recharge build) you only have the normal attacks. Those attacks are pretty much middle of the road at best using incendiary ammo and below average using anything else so on spawns where you can't use Hail of Bullets you'll lag behind good AoE sets while not getting the high ST damage or great secondary effect that sets like Ice do to make up for it.

On the other hand, you will look cool and on spawns where HoB is up you'll be deadly... the only question is whether you prefer that to something that does almost as much damage every spawn as DP does with HoB up, but does so with a lot less style.

Instant Healing doesn't stack, sadly (at least according to Mids). And good luck actually getting super inspirations to use, unless you want to spend millions of inf just to pull off a cool trick.

I do think I want to take Burnout if I ever make an Ice Blast user though... double stacked Blizzard sounds fun.

I thought Dark Miasma had an AoE stun that happened to rez any fallen teammates in the area...

You definitely can't go wrong with a Rad/Sonic Defender for debuffing, and Dark/Dark Defenders are also great at it (they debuff fewer things, but they debuff the heck out of them and they tend to be things you really want debuffed, like ability to hit). Cold Domination is also a great debuff set, though you need lots of recharge to really get the most from it.

One character I'm currently trying out is an Electric/Time Controller. At first glance it doesn't look like it debuffs nearly as well as a /Rad or /Cold but between the massive slows and the endurance drain what you actually debuff is the enemy's ability to attack you at all... that seems like a pretty hefty debuff to me.

For soloing it also depends on what you fight. Against same level minions and Lts they'll be almost identical since Scourge isn't that useful. Against bosses or if soloing at +2 or +3 difficulty, the Corruptor will start to pull away due to those enemies requireing quite a few shots to take down and therefore having a good chance for Scourge to actually go off. Against EBs or AVs the Corruptor is at a significant advantage.

However, in some cases the Defender's stronger debuffs will change things. For instance, a Rad/Sonic Defender is going to probably outperform a Sonic/Rad Corruptor against any target, simply because the stronger -resist debuffs will lead to more damage than Scourge will. The Corruptor might pull back ahead against full AVs since you can Scoruge a lot on those, but it'll be close and for anything weaker the stronger debuffs will be better.

My gripe with Force Field is that it's almost purely defensive. It protects very well, but aside from one moderate damage AoE attack that has a ton of KB it really does nothing to help you defeat enemies faster. Sonic protects fairly well while also giving -resist debuffs to help speed up fights. /FF MMs are pretty much the safest and easiest, but they're also generally the slowest and most boring. It's a great secondary if you like using your personal attack powers though, since you likely won't have anything better to do most of the time.

I've played Demons/Dark and Demons/Thermal to pretty high levels and both are beasts. Demons/Dark can effectively softcap against non-AVs simply by debuffing the enemy to-hit through the floor, which lets you turn them loose and focus fire on things rather than fooling with Bodyguard. However, AVs resist Dark's debuffs heavily so those will be trickier... on the other hand, you have a great heal and significant -regen plus enough to-hit debuff to make a noticeable difference even on AVs so I can see Demons/Dark soloing them pretty well.

Demons/Thermal is also nasty, since it basically turns the pets into mini-tanks and heals them quickly. The downside is that they will still get hit often, so enemies with heavy debuffs can be a problem. You will also get hit often if you take aggro, so you can't really Tankermind well... on the bright side, you can protect your pets from mezzes and make them tough enough to survive AV aggro themselves (at least to a point). I doubt Demons/Thermal would handle GMs very well though, simply because even Thermal shielded pets will go down pretty quick to that kind of damage. My personal favorite thing about Demons/Thermal is that when you come up against Scrapyarders or Destroyers and they start throwing their Burn Patches of Pet Melting Doom, you can just ignore the patches entirely and watch your demons tear the mobs apart. Between your shields and the Ember Demon's shield your pets are going to be at near Fire Tanker level fire resists... burn patches barely tickle them.

Demons/Pain can do a lot of what Demons/Thermal can, but it takes more recharge. Perma-World of Pain is a nice resist boost that can make the demons almost as tough as Thermal shields (except to fire), but it can't be made permanent without decent global recharge. You also get World of Pain and Painbringer vs Forge in Thermal, and both sets have decent debuffs. Overall I'd say they're close to even, but Thermal is better for AVs since it has a nice hefty -regen power and Pain doesn't.

I haven't played Demons/Traps, but I suspect it would be good since Traps are always good. Not as good as Bots/Traps though, simply because Demons are more melee oriented so they tend to spread out more, which makes it harder to keep them in the FFG sphere and makes the "shoot from behind caltrops" strategy rather difficult. Demons/Traps with Team TP might be interesting... pop in right in the middle of the enemy (towing your FFG) and let the demons go to town while you toe bomb with mines and Poison Traps. That's assuming FFG does teleport with you, which I would assume but haven't tested.

I'm tempted to try Demons/Sonic... since Demons have a dedicated melee pet to serve as a Sonic Dispersion anchor I could see it working rather well. Unfortunately, Sonic has no -regen so AV soloing will be painful but mowing down large spawns of normal mobs should be a blast. I personally consider Demons/Dark my favorite combo so far, with Demons/Thermal not too far behind, but I still haven't tried several.

I wouldn't advise putting any henchmen on Aggressive unless you are in a mayhem mission and just want to trash everything. You'll keep better control if you keep them all Defensive and make a macro that orders specific pets to attack your target... that way you can focus your best damage on a specific target but as soon as the actively hostile mobs are gone the pets will all follow you until ordered to attack again (or you get attacked). If you put some on Aggressive then they're liable to aggro other spawns before you are ready. (Of course in low threat environments you may want them to go wild, but in general you probably want to decide for yourself when a given spawn is aggroed.)

For Bots, I'd leave everything on Bodyguard except the Assault Bot. He is a large chunk of your total damage and you want him attacking the middle of a spawn since he has lots of AoEs. The Battle Drones and Protectors are about equal in damage (the drones are better for single targets, but the Protectors actually have decent AoE from their Photon Grenades) and neither come close to the Assault Bot.

With Demons, it gets a little trickier. The Hellfire Gargoyle is your main offensive pet, with the Demonlings and Ember Demon also packing decent damage and the Demon Prince having a mix of damage and debuffs. I'd actually consider leaving them all on Bodyguard most of the time since they do pretty well without micromanagement (probably the best of all MM pets) and maybe have separate macros for having the Gargoyle and Prince attack. You want the Gargoyle going after the biggest threat, and you kind of want the Prince aiming at the middle of the pack so his Chilling Embrace and Shiver hit lots of things. With the right secondary (like Thermal) Demons can also become extremely tough, in which case you may want to avoid personal aggro altogether and just direct them all to focus fire on one target at a time.

I don't know much about Ninjas or Necro, but I do know that Genin love running around at stupidly high speeds aggroing things before you realize where they went, so if you don't really need lots of Bodyguard fodder you may want to manually direct the Genin to all focus on one target. I also know the Lich is a low damage controller pet, so I'd have a separate macro for pointing him at things you'd like locked down or debuffed and leave him on Bodyguard the rest of the time. I think the Grave Knights are your main damage so they're who you'll mainly want to be manually directing, and you'll want a Goto macro for them so they go into melee and use their swords.

It's probably because Interface abilities are procs rather than standard powers... and furthermore they don't actually proc an effect on the target, they grant the target a self damage / self debuff power that then triggers. So the target is actually the one doing the effect, not you... it might take code changes to get custom color info passed along to the power that actually creates the effect.

So which eight Stalkers will you be using?

Try a Bots/Traps MM. Bots/Time/Mace does look good... you'll have a lot of mitigation from Time plus Scorpion Shield and Power Boost from Mace, so you should be quite tough. However, /Traps can softcap without Scorpion Shield and will boost your damage more than Time will... and more importantly, /Traps gets mez protection. Bots/Traps can solo AVs and even GMs with just SOs... it doesn't get much easier than that.

I don't have time to work up a build right now, but an Electric/Time Controller would be a good option. You get have one of the lowest damage control sets paired with a buff/debuff set that doesn't do much to boost your own damage, but you'll completely neuter any mob that gets near you while massively buffing your team.

Good low-maintenance choices:

• Bots/FF MM - Summon the bots, upgrade them, and bubble them up. Then just go around telling them to kill stuff and watching the pretty light show... all you really need to do is reapply the bubbles every four minutes and maybe toss an Aid Other or two. You can go nuts woth Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb if you want, or even take a couple of your Pulse Rifle powers, but you really don't have to do anything more than stay close enough to the bots to keep them in your Dispersion Bubble.
• Anything/WP Brute or Scrapper - WP is pretty much a "fire and forget" defensive set, so just toggle up and run around smashing things. Axe/WP or DB/WP are nice because they get good attack chains with pretty low global recharge so you won't even need to fool with Hasten, and if you want to be even more survivable then try Stone Melee/WP.
• Bane Spider - You're a Mace/SR Stalker that can actually stand and fight (plus you get great team buffs). Much like WP, just toggle up and go... with the added bonus of being able to skip fighting altogether if you want and just stealth in, clobber the boss or the spawn guarding the glowie, and be done. You may want Aid Self, but really eating the occasional green pill works pretty well once you softcap (which is quite easy).
• Fire/Fire Blaster - If you're a little suicidal and willing to dump a billion or two inf into making a S/L softcapped Blaster then this combo is great fun. Jump into the middle of a spawn, tap a few buttons, and watch everything die. Including possibly you. You have to pick your enemies to avoid non-S/L attacks, but as long as you do you can mow down spawns insanely fast and you don't have to worry about fooling with a bunch of fancy defensive powers since, well, you don't have any. (Well, aside from defense toggles).
• Dark Melee/SR Scrapper or Brute (or SR/DM Tank now) - You're almost unhittable and you have a self heal in your standard attack chain. It doesn't really get much more simple than that.

Only the "Disintegrate" power can actually trigger the initial Disintegrate effect. If you shoot something with Disintegrate you'll apply a Disintegrate status to that target for a while (maybe 10 seconds or so). This Disintegrate effect does two things: it deals some damage over time, and it makes other Beam Rifle attacks have extra effects (usually bonus damage) on that target. You see the "Disintegration" message appear whenever you get this bonus effect. If you shoot a target that is currently under the Disintegrate effect with any single target blast except Disintegrate then it has a chance to trigger Disintegration Spread, which applies the Disintegrate effect to up to three nearby targets. The chance of getting a spread depends on what attack you use... the snipe will always trigger it, Lancer Shot has a good chance to do so, and Charged Shot and Single Shot have lower chances (Single Shot is the worst). If you see the "Disintegration Spread" message then you know you now have multiple targets vulnerable to bonus damage so it would be a good time to use Cutting Beam.

Thanks... I usually don't play primary debuffers so I didn't realize that none of the effects would stack on them. I tend to think of slows as control powers so I just assumed it would stack like stuns or holds. Ah well, it looks like Distortion Field and Time Crawl will be enough to put a major dent in enemy recharge even without stacking, plus pretty much floor their movement. Now the only question is, stay Time/Fire for the damage or reroll as Time/Ice just to see how slow I actually can make things.