Twisty

I have a level 50 Dark Melee/Fiery Aura (I believe she was my first 50 on the Red-Side).

There were four powers that stood out to me as great survival tools (beyond the shields and Healing Flames).

1st) Siphon Life. This power was terrible back in Issue 1, but it has been steadily buffed into a great attack and a moderate (when slotted for) heal. Since the damage buff, I often use this on first injury and sometimes avoid using Healing Flames at all.

2nd)Tough. The resistance in FA just isn't enough, I found. My survivability went up dramatically when I added it to my build. That said, you weigh Tough against Midnight Grasp and I want the dark killy thing. Midnight Grasp becomes even more appealing if you're looking to leverage the next power...

3rd) Burn. While everyone want to make the baddies stand still in the patch and die, it can also function as a defensive tool. Whether by blocking a doorway and limiting exposure to ranged attacks, or by forcing heavy meleers to run away and engage you with weaker ranged attacks, I've found many uses for Burn beyond the obvious damage. They never seem to run far, and they come back... sometimes in unison, like they want me to cook them again all at once.

4th) Hasten. With Dark Melee and Fiery Aura loaded with all these cool clicky powers with buffs and hurts built in, I felt like I dumped gasoline on my character when I dropped this into my build after doing a Patron Respec, I think. Anyhow, I cursed myself for not doing it sooner.

Anyhow, these are just some of my observations from playing the combo. I like slotting for recharge and health, but if you wanted to take Weave and had plenty of cash for the Steadfast Protection doohicky and whatever sets you want, then the defense might stack up enough to significantly add to your survivability. Unfortunately, I played my Brute on a shoestring, so she never really got too many sets. But that's part of what I love about this game: So many different ways to steal a guy's soul and set him on fire

I've found the mayhem missions to be a real mixed bag.

On the one hand the Atlas Park, King's Row, and Skyway missions were a lot of fun, chok full of smashing cars and crates, and fire hydrants and what not. I very much enjoyed the side missions, be it pawn shop, arson, kidnapping, etc...

However, once the swat team appears all fun vanishes. Flashbangs and glue arrows stack up quickly from even a handful of these guys. Whether with Brute or Corruptor, if the swat team got the drop on me I was in for a VERY long fight (minutes). Miss, miss, miss... crawl, crawl, crawl... this is NOT fun.

I think the stacked debuffs need to be examined, whether in duration or in recharge, and reduced to a sane level. Standing around unable to do anything for minutes at a time, either slowly dying or equally slowly winning is not fun. If the swat team is supposed to be so tough, why not drop the debuffs and triple their damage? At least things would be decided quickly one way or the other.

A more practical consideration is, if there's such an abundant and well equipped swat team that can respond en masse on a moment's notice... why on earth are there even heroes?! The whole game of CoH is invalidated by these extremely potent minions. If they were more like Malta (with the sappers) or Longbow (with the 40+ Spec-Ops) and there was one key baddie to neutralize first, that would encourage smart strategy and be managable. Having 4 minions chain debuff you into total ineffectiveness... and then spending 3 minutes beating you down is boring and frustrating. I for one will not waste my time on Mayhem Missions that include Swat teams, if they go live as is.

One other smaller point, why do ALL the cops in the Founder's Falls missions have to be Psi? This seems unbalanced towards /Fire and /Invul, since above level 30 so many of the enemies use attacks other than Smash/Lethal. Couldn't there be a mix of enemies? Just a thought.

Overall I appreciate the destructable environments and the side missions and the wonderful prizes you can find, but the swat team and their silly/potent debuffs sap the fun right out of the missions they appear in.