Umbral

The builds in which I don't slot Swipe are those that are designed with enough recharge to run attack strings that don't need it. I've made a few builds that have it slotted when I've got a few slots to throw around, but that one is a bit tight on slots because I like 6 slotting. I didn't really have 5 free slots lying around for what would amount to a set mule (though, in previous versions, I've excluded Eviscerate and used the spare slots to mule out Swipe).

That is something we'll never see because too many of the people that currently start threads on the Suggestions and Ideas board would be hurt that they don't get to post on the "intelligent" one. There is a fair deal of similarity between "Things We'll Never See" and "Things We'd Like to See". I've got a large number of things that I could bring up that belong on both lists, but, then again, I'm a spite filled ***-hole that honestly believes that there should be a standardized test given before a person is allowed to procreate.

That's not my intent at all. My intent is to point out that villains haven't had it nearly as bad as people make it out to be. They've gotten additional content. The things that people continually point out as being blatantly unfair are Cimerora (in which there is actually a given reason why the villains are behaving as such) and RWZ (in which it fits with the genre for the villains to be helping to fight the evil invaders) while they ignore the fact that while villains have actually gotten a decent bit of unique development (VEATs).

I'm not entirely sure what you're considering the one arc and two short SFs to be. The 2 ouro SFs (Tesseract and Silos) are decidedly villainous (unless you don't think that assassinating someone and invading another city is villainous). The Barracuda SF, while not necessarily "villainous", is decidedly on the evil side of mercenary. The entirety of the VEAT arc is pretty villainous, if a bit spiteful miniony. The arc to join the Midnighter's may not be specifically evil, but it's definitely got a darker cast to it. The two Cimeroran arcs seemed rather evil to me, especially since it involves attempting to destabilize the political structure of the era for your own benefit.

Of course, you're also excluding the single biggest helping of content that anyone has gotten since CoV has been introduced: Grandville. The amount of content even in the initial release of the zone easily outstrips the 4 arcs that heroes got from the Faultline revamp, which would be the closest blueside parallel for the purposes of this discussion since CoV wasn't even in the early design stages when PI was released.

So you'd rather the UN organization that is attempting to fight off the alien invasion begin paying you or encouraging you to kick puppies and kidnap civilians? There are certain things you have to accept as sacrifices to realism. When villains aren't working in a completely lawless environment, it makes a bit of sense for the villains to get treated as such to be kept in line (which is amusing to read from the blueside standpoint as well because they talk down to you even when you're supposed to be someone that has saved the world any number of times).

That depends on what you considering "appreciable length" to be. The VEAT content is pretty long and should count for something. The Barracuda SF is reasonably decent and involved a decent bit of work. In fact, I'm pretty sure that villains have actually gotten at least one appreciably long arc, or the equivalent, every year or so. When you compare what vills have gotten to what heroes have gotten since CoV was released, vills have actually gotten a good bit.

The entire point of what I've been trying to tell people throughout this entire thread is that the "villains are always getting less than heroes" line that people are always recycling is mostly perception bias. People see CoH and they see more zones and more TFs and assume that CoH has been getting all the love. CoH and CoV have been getting a reasonably decent split that doesn't disproportionately favor either side, honestly (heroes have gotten preference from the co-op content but vills have gotten more in pure volume). I'm simply fed up with the ignorant assertion that vills have always gotten screwed and that the devs need to focus on them for a while in order to make up for it.

I keep forgetting that just because someone has an idea, it's automatically a good one that should be discussed and encouraged no matter how inane, useless, or otherwise a complete and total waste of time it is! Intellectual Darwinism is bad!

How about this:

Exclusive Intelligent Suggestions and Ideas Forum [everyone can read, but the only people allowed to post are those that have actually proven elsewhere on the forums that they're actually intelligent to not fill it with utter rubbish]

No. It looks like a joke build honestly. You didn't touch Recon, DP, or QR, slotted Slash and Shockwave (both attacks) for their secondary effects rather than damage, FU is slotted with Gaussian's even though it's completely worthless for it, delayed taking your mez toggle for 12 levels and slotted the entirely wrong enhancement into it, and even more things are wrong that I don't want to bother having to put into words. You really should do your research before posting stuff. An SO build is going to do better than that.

If you were just posting something in the hopes that someone would do the work or have done the work for you already, I'm not entirely sure I should encourage that behavior. That build shows an utter lack of knowledge in even the most basic build knowledge for SOs, much less IOs.

I'm tempted to show you an SO build in the hopes that you'll actually learn something rather than simply blindly following it, not that you've actually put forth much work anyway. If you need something to at least model a decent IO build after, look at this. Notice that the attacks that are going to be used are actually slotted like attacks, the click powers are slotted so that they'll actually be effective, and the set bonuses actually work together rather than at ends.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Technology Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Claws
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Swipe -- Acc-I(A)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Reconstruction -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(3), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(3), Dct'dW-Heal(5), Dct'dW-Rchg(5)
Level 4: Quick Recovery -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(21), EndMod-I(21)
Level 6: Spin -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(7), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(7), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(17), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Oblit-%Dam(19)
Level 8: Follow Up -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(9), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(9), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), T'Death-Dam%(17)
Level 10: Dull Pain -- Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(11), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Dct'dW-Heal(13), Dct'dW-Rchg(13)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(23), Winter-ResSlow(36)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(37), Zephyr-ResKB(50)
Level 16: Integration -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(23), RgnTis-Regen+(25), RgnTis-Heal/EndRdx(25)
Level 18: Focus -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(27), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29)
Level 20: Slash -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(31), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Achilles-ResDeb%(33)
Level 22: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(33), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 24: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Tough -- Aegis-ResDam(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(34), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(34)
Level 28: Instant Healing -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 30: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(37), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(37)
Level 32: Shockwave -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(39), Posi-Dmg/Rng(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40)
Level 35: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(40), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(40)
Level 38: Moment of Glory -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(42), RechRdx-I(42), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(43), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(45), GSFC-Build%(45)
Level 44: Physical Perfection -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(45), EndMod-I(46), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(46), Mrcl-Rcvry+(46)
Level 47: Eviscerate -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50), Oblit-%Dam(50)
Level 49: Resilience -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit

For Elec/Shield, the Scrapper trumps all. Elec/* utilizes pseudo-pets to accomplish some of its weirder abilities (CI and LR) which means that the Scrapper has a definite advantage there, for the reasons Silas described. Softcapping will provide a vast majority your survivability, so the only survivability difference is generated by hit point differences, which are more than overcome by the greater damage that the Scrapper is going to deal.

Then I'm pretty much going to recommend Kat/WP or BS/WP. Kat and BS bring DA and Parry, respectively, which are going to combine with the impressive survivability of WP to make you pretty much unkillable, not to mention that both of them are a decent mix of ST and AoE damage. */WP is great because you get Quick Recovery, so you don't have to spend a lot of your early power picks on Fitness just to get Stamina at 20, and it's got an excellent mix of damage recovery and damage mitigation.

It's pretty well known that the devs have told us they're giving us the map improvements such as the one that will display remaining enemies when a certain portion of those remaining on the map are gone.

Actually, they do roughly equivalent damage at about 75% fury.

The bigger distinction between Brute and Scrapper is that they perform roughly the same solo but the Brute whoops the Scrapper's *** on teams because the Brute simply has better caps.

As to the OP, are you looking for something that'll be an unkillable beatstick in SOs or do you have several hundred million/a few billion to spend? Kat/WP is pretty hard to beat for survivability meets damage in the SO range while DM/SD, Fire/SD, and Elec/SD are all pretty much the kings of their respective domains (AV soloing, outright DPS, AoE damage, respectively) while being incredibly hard to kill, though they require a hefty investment.

Lol, that's not going to happen. Trust me. You should be aiming for ~30% +def(melee) and 20-25% +def(ranged, AoE) along with a boatload of +rech. Softcapping isn't the be-all, end all of every friggin' build in the game.

No one has said that */SD is squishy with IOs. If anything, the plethora of IO builds for */SD demonstrate that it is quite hardy with IOs. However, the set is considered by many to be rather weak while in SOs and lower because of the lower defensive values. This hasn't been my experience on my Fire/SD, but, then again, I generally kill stuff fast enough to not get hurt that badly.

As to your actual build, I will say that it's pretty mediocre for what you could be doing with it. Most of your attacks are underslotted in order to give you the slots to 6 slot set mule powers (or otherwise spend slots on powers that don't need any more slots because you wanted the set bonuses). What you did to your attacks simply saddens me. You could do a lot better than that build by actually capitalizing on the basics of slotting rather than simply ignoring enhancement values for set bonuses.

For the OP, when you do start heading down the path of IOs, remember that you should always pay attention to the enhancement values in a power. Ignoring the enhancement values of powers is a surefire way to drastically restrict their effectiveness.

No, you must have read some other post by someone else. I'm not on a high horse. I'm simply saying that the games have gotten equivalent development time since they have both been released and, if there is a disparity, it's towards villains. I wouldn't be saying "nyahnyahnyah" if I were actually refuting your claims with actual evidence rather than simply restating common complaints by players that act as if both games have been around the same amount of time.

Yeah, that was my bad. Nerdrage blindness. I will, however, state that you were quoting me and attempting to point out incorrectness when the specific context of everything that I said was since CoV was released, rather than assuming equal lifespans for both.

Actually, CoH was released "incomplete". The level cap was originally 40, there wasn't a search function for team, and there were no APPs or EATs. Hell, there weren't even inherent powers until a good deal after the game was released. Try looking at all of the features that players use now without even noticing and then check out the first few issue releases. You'll be amazed at how many of them didn't even exist until the game had already been played for several months to a year.

I still stand by my statement that you can't compare the development that each game has gotten since each of their releases on a side-by-side basis. Because CoH has been out for so much longer, it's a foregone conclusion that CoH will have substantially more. Attempting to "equalize it" isn't going to be good for the game at all because all it will do is ostracize a majority of the player base. If you actually look at development effort that has been expended since CoV's release, however, you're actually going to get a much more fair minded (though still villain prejudiced) view of how development effort has been expended.

From a content standpoint, they're not, nor will they ever be, the same game. CoH had more than 2 years of headstart on content that is never going to be made up by CoV unless the devs suddenly decide that it would good for them to give less to the game that gives them more money.

Their current method is working perfectly fine because it's giving each side a bit more every issue. Sure, villains will complain because they don't have as much as heroes but that's not something that the devs can efficiently address while still developing for both games. The best you can hope for is for the current trend (a roughly 55/45 vills/hero split) to continue.

But arguing with people you've never seen and likely never will is what the internet is for!

Which is why that MMO allows for different download methodologies. When I played it, I just followed the link for the direct download of the patches (which was hosted externally) rather than using the throttled torrent.

This so hard.

The Shadow Shard zones are, and have since their initial release, been some of the most interesting and original zones in the entire game. They've got a great epic storyline, about as much lore as the rest of the game put together, one of the most interesting villain groups anywhere and... pretty much nothing else? It's just been sitting there for the last 14 Issues without any additional content. It's got 4 of the largest, most visually interesting zones in the game, but they're completely empty except for the TFs. What's worse is that there are people that have absolutely no idea that these zones exist because they're hidden behind a single zone portal in PI with no other mention.

The Shadow Shard needs some serious lovin' bad.

Apparently mother nature decided to throw some of that our way because I just found out that the weather report is predicting snow in Texas within the next couple of days. I'm still trying to figure out how it's supposed to happen. I was wearing shorts just a couple of days ago.

We're not talking about parity generation at all. You specifically said

The only content (i.e. mishes) that were added were exclusively redside. That's an entire issue in which all of the content was for villains. It doesn't matter if it was done for whatever reason. It still stands as a villain only content issue.

Except that it was done as such because heroes (which formed and still form a substantially larger portion of the population) complained about villains getting absolutely everything that issue. Heroes got all of the similar functions because villains got all of it the previous issue.

Except that we're not comparing content that came out before CoV did. Issue 3 was released when all development effort was being directed towards CoH. Comparing issues after the release of CoV to those before is simply putting up a smokescreen to the fact that, yes, there was, in fact, a development disparity that favored villains.

So now you're complaining about the fact that vills got much more complex and developer intensive content as opposed to the rather simple tank-and-spank that heroes got? So the devs favor heroes because they give us simple stuff that only requires math in order to find balance for as opposed to one that requires a decent amount of coding and substantially more internal testing? As to the times, aren't villains always complaining about having SFs that are too short? Are you even listening to yourself?

Except that, in order to "catch up" to the 5 issue lead that heroes have over villains using your 3/1 development effort split, the next year would have to be heavily villain preferential. Considering that a majority of the players of the game are blueside, you're going to be spending more money on fewer people because one of the two games has been out longer. Rather than spending effort equally, which still ends up meaning that, on a per player basis, villains are getting more spend on them, you want to overturn that completely and risk losing blueside players that are pissed off that the developers aren't paying attention to them?

Please, stop the whole "I'm a villain, the devs hate us, we're the victims" bull-**** and realize that just because your game came much later doesn't mean that the devs have to play catch up to make sure that everything is equivalent. CoV and CoH are the same game mechanically. From a content standpoint, they're completely separate: CoH is a game that's been out for the last 5 years, CoV is a game that's been out for 3 and a half. The devs don't need to prefer villains just because heroes were lucky enough to be the first game generated.

Except that I didn't. I had already debunked that idea twice earlier on in the thread, with special emphasis in the thread right before the one that I quoted.

You don't get to use the martyr card whenever it's apparent that you haven't even been reading half of what I've been saying.

And I love you, too.

Actually, Warmth and Cauterize are the exact same strength as Healing Aura and Heal Other respectively. The only "healing" that Empathy has over any other set is Absorb Pain, which has substantial side effects to its use to account for the obscene and oftentimes redundant healing ability.

Something else to remember concerning healing: Dark Miasma's Twilight Grasp and Kinetic's Transfusion are 91% as effective as the normal single target heals (Heal Other, Cauterize) and are AoE heals. They require tohit checks to go off, which can hurt sometimes, but they're in sets that have substantial buffing and debuffing and you can easily get a 95% chance to hit in a majority of situations (not to mention that you can get Tactics and make it that much easier).

I've found on my shield scrap that AAO actually increases my survivability by increasing the rate at which I kill stuff. By decreasing the time in which I'm at risk for any particular fight, it actually serves to keep me alive by having me kill things faster. Of course, this is assuming you're not trapped in scrapperlock wherein the entire point is that you're fighting the entire time and increasing kill speed just means you're running into another group faster.

AAO is actually pretty cheap at .21 end/sec (.208 end/sec actually, but the in game numbers round up), so endurance costs shouldn't really be an issue, especially since the only thing you can slot it with is end redux. With just a single SO, AAO is still going to be cheaper (.158 end/sec) than Tough or Weave slotted with 2 end redux (.196 end/sec).

Base regeneration doesn't play a part in the end magnitude of the heal uniques. What Werner and I were referring to was that you're should enhance a power with more enhanceable +regen than one with less because the enhancement values are identical. If you are going to enhance both FH and Integration with the exact same amount of heal enhancement, it doesn't matter which power gets the +regen unique: the +regen will be the same no matter what because the enhancement value is the same. However, if you're short on slots and you can enhance one of the powers 75% and the other 100%, your best option is to put both the unique and the higher enhancement value in the power that has the higher base regeneration value: the heal unique follows the higher enhancement value and the higher enhancement value should follow the power with the higher base value.

Turg, I can empathize with you completely. It was horrible. We got about an inch and a half of rain over the weekend and it was simply frigid: 45 degrees! Simply inhuman!

Please, stop encouraging bad defendering. I can assure you that, if you're not below level 10, your Healing Aura spam isn't actually doing the work of keeping the team alive. What's really doing the work is the other support person on the team actually using their buffs and debuffs, like that other emp that never seems to use Healing Aura yet manages to keep half the team Fort'ed so that those people aren't getting hit in the first place.

Yet what you are asking for specifically is that one side receive more development time than another. There's nothing wrong with getting unique content. The problem exists when you start asking that one side get content at the expense of the other which is specifically what you're asking for. Redside is always going to have less content than blueside. Any disparity in further development is going to be detrimental to the game as a whole because it discourages people from playing the side that isn't getting as much new stuff (i.e. developer prejudice).

What you don't seem to comprehend is that equal development doesn't necessarily mean that everything needs to be co-op (which happened for such a long time primarily because it's an efficient way to provide content for both sides which was important when the developers had been pared down to a skeleton crew).

And that's blatantly untrue. The first patch after CoV came out was exclusively villain content. The issue after that was hero centric thanks to the incredible backlash that ensued from developing preferentially. Issue 9 equalized end game content. Issue 10 gave villains the first "neutral" content, which actually makes sense within context because even villains fight the Rikti. Issue 11 introduced Ouro, which gave the exact same amount of properly aligned content to each side. Issue 12 introduced Cimerora, which was, arguably, more hero centric than villain centric, however, it also introduced VEATs, which used up a lot of development resources for their entire story arc, which is substantially more content than arrived via Cimerora. Issues 13, 14, and 16 didn't provide any real content (AE is player made content so it doesn't really count for either). Issue 15 released a villain only TF and a hero only TF.

If you actually look at all the content that was introduced after CoV, you'll notice that very little of it is actually preferential towards heroes. The only reason you're misconstruing it is because of Cimerora, which was hero-centric, while completely ignoring the fact that more was done for villains in that patch thanks to the VEAT content. Compare all the stuff that Alan Desslock gives compared to the synopsis contact, repeatable mission contact and 4 mission TF that, while being nominally hero-centric, is still available to both sides.

You can have villain only content while simultaneously releasing hero only content and there isn't a content release disparity. The Barracuda SF and the Dr. Kahn TF are both side exclusive content released at the same time. Villains got villain only content, and heroes got hero only content. It was additional content that was generated through equal development and what villains got was villain only. That's precisely what you're asking for and, through some strange quirk of development voodoo, didn't actually require drawing resources from one game to do so for the other.