Vauluur

Well I would suggest pairing something with minimal redraw because of the Momentum mechanic of Titan Weapons.

In practice a number of secondaries would work. Invuln, Willpower, Electric, and Energy are all excellent possibilities. I'll try to outline the basic strengths of them for you in this post, but please don't think of this as the end all of Titan/? posts. I have little experience with Titan and none with any of the sets I'm going to discuss (except /Invuln which is my main's secondary).

Mixed Protection:

These sets provide a combination of Defense, Resistance, and Regen/HP/Heals to give you what is commonly referred to as "layered defense". This means that these sets give you various survival tools to use. They include Invulnerability and Willpower.

Willpower provides primarily +Regen, with a decent amount of Defense and Resistance. Typically, Willpower's weakness is alpha strikes. Defensive Sweep from Titan Weapons would add little to this set IMO as the Defense from Willpower is typed. That means you would be gaining Smashing defense, but a high end IO build would be aiming for 45% (the softcap) to S/L/E (and usually ends up with 45% to N as well). Willpower also has the benefit of not really needing click powers which means no redraw. However, Willpower has less resistance to defense debuffs than Invulnerability does. That means you will be taking more hits, and counting on Regen from Rise to the Challenge to deal with that. In extreme situations, this may be a problem since Regen can also be debuffed. That won't be noticeable in normal play though.

Invulnerability provides a mix of Defense and Resistance, while offering a powerful heal/+HP power in Dull Pain. A well built Invulnerability Scrapper will easily be softcapped to S/L/E/N in normal content and have a much better start towards the Incarnate softcap in trials. They will also have capped S/L resistance which will deal with a lot of the damage that makes it through your Defense. Dull Pain can be up whenever you need it and means you'll effectively have capped HP at high levels. Invulnerability's only real weakness is the lack of protection from psionic attacks which can be covered using a combination of IOs, temporary powers, and accolades. Invulnerability is something of a late bloomer though in comparison to Willpower, IMO it's worth it but YMMV.

Resistance:

A Resistance-based armor set lacks native Defense, but arguably gains more from an IO build. Electric Armor fits into this category for you.

Electric Armor will have very high Resistance, meaning you'll take less damage. IO sets will allow you to get Defense to lower the number of hits you take (to a theoretical minimum of 5% of incoming attacks, due to the softcap). You should aim to get positional defense because you will always have one application of Defensive Sweep (which you should take for this set, unlike Invuln or Willpower) to give you a good bit of Melee Defense. With careful selection of IO sets it should be possible to reach M/R softcap I think. It's also worth noting that Electric Armor has a damage aura, which would make your AoE damage even more insane and help DPS when you are regaining Momentum.

Defense:

Energy Armor is your Defense set. It would allow you to reach the softcap very easily, and let you use IOs to slot for other bonuses. I know very little about the set beyond that, but the lack of Resistance shouldn't be as much of a problem as you seem to think it will be.


Really any secondary should work for you, some will just be harder to level than the others. For example, a Titan/Regen would be frustrating to level but would be an effective character at high levels. I suggest you pick your powerset for concept, and worry about synergy afterwards.

Thanks for the responses! I am thinking the character will work out. Sonic might be ideal for melee henchmen, but most of the set works pretty well with Bots. I'm not too worried about the defense numbers for the Bots. Leveling, they should do fine with the enhanced resists from Sonic and I plan on having Diamagnetic Interface and Barrier Destiny in the end game. Besides, they have more defense than a Demons/Thermal and those seem to do well.

Liquefy seems great, but it looks like it has a really long recharge. I doubt I can have it every spawn. Though, with careful application of Sonic Siphon I shouldn't have enough enemies living long enough that it matters in most spawns.

IIRC fly protection is what the game uses to do -fly, in that it blocks flight powers from lifting you into the air. If that's correct, it makes Liquefy even more attractive.

I'll put a build together sometime soon, with MW3 being out now that might be in a few days though

I actually like the idea of Essence Mastery, it would allow the Khelds to perform better as a team-based AT IMO. I'm not sure it needs to be exclusive with the forms though, since you wouldn't be able to trigger those powers in a form anyway. It would actually make tri-form more appealing to me if some of these powers existed, since you could buff/debuff in human form, tank in Dwarf, and deal damage in Nova.

With a high level Incarnate build, you'll get better mileage out of permanent Call Reinforcements. It summons two pets, giving twice the added chances for your Interface to trigger. This translates to more debuffing and/or more DoT in the end game. Really, it's probably better than patron pets all around. I'm on an iPad atm so I can't comment on your build as a whole, but that's just my observation for you.

Without seeing your build:

Alpha: Spiritual. It buffs recharge and healing.

Interface: Pick one that deals some type of DoT. Degenerative might be fun, haven't seen the numbers on it yet though.

Judgement: Pick whatever fits your concept, these are all useful.

Destiny: Probably Barrier Core or Rebirth Radial. The others won't be too useful for you.

Lore: Whatever fits your concept. Romans if you only care about ST damage numbers.

Hello Masterminds! My altitis has been getting the best of me lately, and another concept character will soon be created. This one, as you might have guessed, will be a Bots/Sonic MM. Barring any outcries of "NOOOOO IT'S T3H SUX!" from the forums. I'm following my general strategy of envisioning the character both in leveling and endgame contexts as I try to think up a build. Which leads me into my questions.

1.) Will the resistance from sonic layering with the Protector Bot's defense shields be as good as I think it will be? It seems like having high resistance, decent defense, and heals will make the pets pretty tough.

2.) I seem to recall reading that the Protector Bots will apply stacking shields to the pets, but only one to you (the MM). Is this correct? Also, what is the value of that shield?

3.) At higher levels, I'm thinking of having the two Pulse Rifle ST attacks for AV fights. I would take Mace Mastery to occupy my time in normal battles with control powers and Mace Beam Volley. Also, Scorpion Shield. Is this a viable decision, or should I consider other options?

4.) The Disruption Field (I think it's called) in Sonic requires an ally. Solo, I was thinking it could be placed on the Assault Bot and I could use the Go To command to send him into a spawn to debuff them. Will that work? Obviously on a team I can just put it on the main tank.

5.) Is there something else I should know before starting this particular combo?

Alright, here's a bit more civil of a response from my thoughts.

First of all, the OP says that there are too many "gimmicks" in the ranged damage ATs. Then goes on to list things he perceives as a gimmick. Positioning, Domination, and support sets. Positioning is an inherent necessity for using ranged attacks, or any attack really. Needing to position your attacks hardly counts as a gimmick. Domination is not a gimmick. It is an inherent power that allows the character to perform better. In your view, are critical hits a gimmick? Scourge? Fury? Support sets you seem to dislike only because they are based around teaming. With the exception of Empathy, they are all just as useful solo. And a great many concepts can be achieved visually and mechanically with that are a match for what you are looking for. That's without even including VEATs and (arguably to a lesser extent) Khelds.

Now that that is out of the way, a Ranged/Armor AT would not offer the playstyle you are looking for. With the exception of a very few enemy groups, the enemies of this game focus mostly on melee damage. Solo, you would attack once and then be standing in melee anyway without the ability to slow, knockback, control, or otherwise maintain distance from your enemies. Thus, you would have to position yourself which is, in your view, an unacceptable gimmick. Not only that, but for this new AT to avoid stepping on the toes of existing ATs it would have to deal something like Defender level damage. Of course, there would then be no reason to bring this AT on a team over the existing ones.

A Melee/Support AT is somewhat more viable, but then you have to worry still about where that AT stands in comparison to the existing ranged support ATs.

Honestly, I believe the game has reached a point (and reached it long ago) where a new standard AT is not needed and is generally not a good idea. A better plan would be to implement new powersets, which the devs have obviously opted to do. With any luck, we will see such things as Natural-themed powersets for Dominators, Controllers, and Blasters. All of those ATs are somewhat lacking in the Natural concept. To put it more simply, there are a wider array of concepts that can't be created at all because powersets do not yet exist for that concept than concepts that can't be created because an AT doesn't yet exist for it. It's easy enough to follow the work arounds for concepts that have been offered in this thread that a new AT would fill. It's much harder to make a Natural Dominator.

You'll want the Barrier destiny. MM pets gain very little from +Regen, and 45% isn't enough def on the trials. Unless you want to rely on team members to have Barrier, I'd pick it up yourself. With all your personal defense and Aid Self, you won't need another heal. Ageless is another potential option as it would give you better recharge and take away any and all endurance concerns.

A number of threads already exist of a similar nature to this one. Two that contain a lot of /Regen information are:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=260718

and

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=277089


That said, I will reply by saying that I largely agree with Uberguy. I'll take it a step further than him by saying that the reactive nature of Regen's survival tools makes its performance vary wildly from player to player. More than any other set, Regen requires an understanding of the game and the abilities of your opponents so that you can anticipate when you will need each power. Talk about Regen underperforming comes from the two extremes of the playerbase for the most part:

1.) People who do not truly understand what they are doing and don't care enough to learn.

2.) People (myself included) that are interested in making high-end IO builds that often reveal Regen isn't able to achieve the same level of insanity as some other sets. In actual gameplay situations, there aren't a lot of times where that matters. Just because we believe Regen performs slightly below other sets on paper (in loose approximations) doesn't mean it's a bad set. I think this a part of the problem with the public perception of Regen. People see some of the threads on the forums and don't fully understand the context of the discussion.

To allow IH, at it's current strength, to be on all the time would make Regen way overpowered in situations where it is already good and do little to make it better in situations where it is bad. It doesn't matter if you are healing hundreds of hitpoints per second if you die in three seconds. IF Regen were to receive another buff beyond what it already has received, it would probably be more resistance. Possibly by having Resilience scale with your current hitpoints in a way similar to the passive resistance in SR. But I would say that's far from needed.