Virusman

Eventually, you will respec your Fortunata, and pick either/or on the claws/mental attacks, for the most part. This depends on which of the two you go with in the end.

As for the Crab, your control is the ridiculous buffs you give the team, sounds weird, but if you pick up the regular Pool maneuvers, in addition to your AT one, you're like a force bubbler that doesn't have to do anything. It's VERY easy to softcap, and you'd be surprised at the amount of people you'll softcap. Crab is one of those characters that you can go SO many different ways on and still be awesome, and I'm not even counting Bane.

Both of the VEATs are solid options, but you'll probably want to go rogue and eventually Hero on them (But you might want to wait until you've unlocked the Patron Pools)


And... Sonic Attack. I find that it takes a while to kill stuff solo, but it's one of my favorite blast sets for support on a team. I've paired Radiation/Sonic on my most recent defender, probably one of my worst solo characters (I could have done slotting better of course) but he is ridiculous on a team. Going from "contributing something other than damage" to "watching a GM melt in 30 sec as the only debuffer" is a big step though.

I might be slightly exaggerating on that last bit, but it's still a killer debuffing set. You might try Kinetics/Sonic, the +DMG to team and -RES to foes is huge, and it doesn't *demand* an expensive IO build such as trying to perma hasten or AM.

I have to disagree with that - lots of people are very happy with it. If anything, that means more power sets should be brought up to the same level.

Or, I Guess if you leave Rage and Foot Stomp alone...

Warworks also have -Regen, and non S/L damage.

They're my favorite.


(Most people go with Cims, though. Very good single-target S/L damage, and I think even -RES?)


Edit: None of them really stand out from an AOE perspective.

Maybe Storm Elementals? I've used them on one of my themed characters, they do fair AOE but their single-target is bad, and they run out of endurance pretty fast.

If you're just concerned with performance, Warworks would probably be your best bet, since they do have a decent AOE among them.


I'd say using Lore pets to fill the AoE gap isn't a great idea, going for the better all-around performer would be a good choice.

E2:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=288994

There is an interesting thread, though the DPS does not take resistances or debuffs into account. Longbow are fairly popular, and may be a good choice.

LMFAO!!

I didn't even see that the first time.



Here I was thinking this post was more of a guy's wishlist or a preliminary suggestion.

Hopefully the set undergoes some changes, as it does look like a very wild card based on the more in-depth explanations, something I think I would enjoy, but also think could use some tweaking.

The very sound of essentially having two healing powers - one providing the temporary HP/shielding mechanic - seems very powerful. However, the actual resistance the set offers (not a lot) seems as though it would balance out.

Man, I'd love to have some temporary HP shielding for /Regen. Heck, Radiation Therapy sounds like the power I suggested to fix /Regen. Oh well, a man can dream.

If you get perma hasten, you've got perma Dull Pain.


Hasten recharges in 450 sec, DP in 360. They've got the same duration.



The reason this is awesome is that Regen is an active defense set, and benefits from +Recharge, as do your attacks. You're building for defense AND offense at the same time.

Sadly, that's necessary for Regen. It seriously underperforms without a good IO build, but is one of the most effective defense sets when you put some effort into it.


I posted during Freedom beta, when they made some changes and ported it to brutes, to get some more balance changes that would make it more powerful (read: comparable to other sets) at an SO level, WITHOUT overpowering it at an IO level, but most people just replied "lol regen sux" and nothing came of it.

Well, I recall reading very brief posts stating both overpowered and underpowered, my comment was not directed towards anyone. Just the OP mentioning those comments.

Since we have no numbers to back it up, we can't say if the set will in function be overpowered, as there are a lot of things to take into consideration.

If we got a set that has Rage, Footstomp, Spin, Burn, ... etc. People would readily call that overpowered. But, if they knew that behind the scenes all of those powers took 10x as long to activate (21 second animation Foot Stomp! yay!) they would be calling it underpowered.

That's a bit of a drastic example and you probably already understand this, but that's my point.



In regards to A and B, I'd say a lot of people's expectations have been met with recent sets, without them (ahem, with an exception) being overpowered.

Similarly, a lot of people's expectations weren't met (Staff Fighting, for example, myself included) without the set necessarily being underpowered or unpopular. Just different.


Of course, it takes a long time to determine how changes will impact the game. Apparently Stone Melee has fallen out of favor for various reasons..

Well, you are right, I was confused by what you had said, now that I go back and read it fully.

However, I would GLADLY take some of these powers, at 1/2 or even 1/3 of their strength, if it meant you could keep them up full-time.

I don't think that, at their current strength, they're on par with what was the intent.


To me, this power seems as though it's the first power we've been given that's taken our current incarnate strength into account, whereas powersets are often built towards using SOs, I feel we've already risen past the point of this power being useful. And it's a power in a "difficult" trial, which you must have the extra slots unlocked to participate in.

Generally, some of them are stronger than others in their current incarnation, more noticeable than the rest. This is true for a lot of the slots, though. While the damage effects from the proc are very nice, the global damage buff is not. Melee, similarly, is "alright" it will add quite a bit to a character that is already survivable, but it's not as good an addition as many options already available, and it's presented in a package that reminds me very much of a T9, albeit without the crash.



AH mentioned something along the lines of, it's FUN to have active powers. He has bound Hasten to Tab, and Dull Pain to the W key, in addition to their normal functions, as these are powers that are perma for him. It takes skill to do that and is fun.

Well, try applying a creative, skillful solution like that to Hybrid.


This is actually an awesome idea, and reflects the name of the skill very well.

I support it wholeheartedly and it would solve all my issues with the power.

Are you experiencing it perma, truly, or does it just LOOK like you're experiencing it perma?

There's a very common bug where it keeps running but doesn't actually provide you any benefit until you manually toggle it off, and wait 2 more mins to start it up again.


But either way, I agree. The current statistics don't scream "T9 SURVIVAL SKILL RAAAAA" it seems completely reasonable to me that you'd be able to run it at all times at the current strength, which is why I was so disappointed to finally use it.

This is a good idea, and I do the same thing.

I was just wondering!


If you've got a partner, it works great.

In a pairing, I actually run a spines/ele scrapper, and it works pretty well at that level.



Now, the real challenge... getting level 36 IOs to really make that character awesome!

Well, with Energize (end discount) and Power Sink, you can do just fine on the endurance front.

I personally use Spiritual on almost all my toons (ele/ele included, closest I have to your build) which makes me use endurance even faster.

I agree, though. Resilient doesn't offer you much past the 13% extra Resistance enhancement, but it can be quite significant. Musculature can be the same way on a lot of characters, and even completely worthless for some, due to low damage cap and existing damage buffs.

I'm glad to have the new Alphas though, because while they might not be shining beacons, they do provide you more to fall back on in cases where you don't need A and B, and just want more of either. I don't think I'll ever have a character that would benefit more from Vigor than from Spiritual, I'm not planning on playing Willpower... but who knows what the future holds?

Ah, yeah. I see your point. I forgot that's how the set bonuses worked.

For some reason I had thought Kin combat was positional, my mistake there. It's been a while since I've done this, I tried, really.

Your lvl 50 survivability will drop a touch if you switch to Spiritual since the +RES really helps to shore up the resist you lose out by using 30's over 50's. If you're slotting 50's, you won't really notice. However, if your Endurance is fine, you might consider switching over to Resilient instead, that'll basically cap your S/L. Basically, you'd be getting some extra Regen out of Spiritual from your skills, in addition to a little more Energize. Unless you get Hasten to perma you may or may not really notice a difference, but you'd be dropping a fair amount of resist.

I agree with this, well said!

I'd be fine if there were a weaker, always-on variant of Hybrid.

As it is, it's not strong enough to rely on in a pinch, and it's just annoying to have to click.. wait 4 mins.. click again... it takes the level of "too many clicks" some characters had BEFORE Incarnate content, and finds a way to make it even more annoying.


Edit: It looks fine on paper, I was super excited to use it.. but it just leaves me disappointed. Annoying really is the best word I can use to describe it in practice. It doesn't make me any weaker, granted, but it doesn't seem like a solid addition to my character's arsenal, which is kind of sad.

Exactly this.

I'm not entirely sure the MODERN dev team puts a lot of thought into DPA, either, but at least some. :P


SM is a very old set, and while it may have been good around the era of ED it has not aged well considering the advent of massive global recharge we can attain.

Plus, you have to consider Super Strength has Rage. That improves the damage from the rest of the set considerably. With Tremor as your AoE you're going to be doing moderate amounts of damage over a long period of time, which is simply not acceptable now that the mindset is no longer "take all the decent powers, use them when you can" with slotting things with an accuracy SO, damage SOs, and likely endurance reduction SOs.

Now we've got IO sets, and a lot more awesome powers to choose from.

Well, it's a fun idea.

I don't want it to be at the point where support characters (my favorite!) are useless.

But, also, being on a Radiation Defender who survives better than the Brutes that I'm wading into groups to revive... kind of makes me feel like I've already crossed *THAT* line.


Take a look at Shield as a set. It's got support abilities, and even a debuff to aid in survivability. By itself, it might not be the king of survivability, but it was designed to be played on a team. That's what I like about it.

More similar sets, I feel, would be very nice. Not full up personal survivability, but just a set that has more varying abilities (like Time manip) coming together to make a character that not only survives, but has some killing tools and group support abilities as well.

We've got an overabundance of melee sets and everybody is just comparing their damage output to one another, there's really a lot more room to explore new areas with the armor sets, somebody has to pitch them.


Edit: My idea for these sets would be similar to Fire Armor survivability level, but with tools that aid the group rise above. Note, I didn't mention the damage output of Fire Armor. For Radiation Armor, I don't think it needs a damage aura, maybe a few ways to slightly increase damage like the -RES I mentioned. Maybe about -5%..

That is so ridiculous and unnecessary.

My hat's off to you sir!

(By the way, if Incarnate stuff isn't out of the question, the +RES Hybrid gives you 26% res/all in a group, 17.07% with one target.)


I'm usually around the 60~70 range on my Brutes, and it's definitely workable. But, I also try to go for a lot of Defense, try to softcap either S/L or Melee.

What's great about ELA are the more "Exotic" resistances, capped E no matter what you do, with decent N/P and F/C. With Energize being such an awesome click heal/regen, you can go +RECH and work towards damage AND survival at that same time! Makes you a beast in the trials where not everything is a smashfest.


Buuut the S/L attacks tend to be a little bit stronger than the less common ones, so they certainly do hurt. Just think of it like this, if somebody gives you Barrier, it's not wasted.

I've looked at the damage potential of staff as a whole, and it's quite a bit lower than that.

If you consider the REST of other powersets, and what you can do in the mean time, I think you'll find staff will be outperformed. That is, maybe the two skills aren't so radically different compared to one another, but look at an entire powerset, Staff has a lack of both high DPS and DPA powers.

My question is... are the buffs worth dealing moderate damage, and on a SMASH set, at that? You can easily build an unkillable SS machine*, so why go for Staff beyond looking cool?


(No, I'm not saying HAHAHA SUPER STRENGTH!! just illustrating the point: what separates Staff Fighting?)