Huntsman (pre- and post- 24 branch leveling build)

I'm happy to see that this thread is getting some attention again.

Just to add a bit to the 'touch of Bane' idea, my Hunts/bane sacrificed some AoE (no Frag grenade and Mace Mastery for the patron pool), to add Shatter, Crowd Control, and Shatter Armor.

His recharge is high enough that he can 'almost' chain these, but the gaps leave the space to mix in Surveilance, Venom Grenade, and Build-up when they're ready. He's soft-capped to all three positions so he doesn't mind wading into the scrum after a single hard target when appropriate and Shatter Armor further increases his ability to apply -res to those unpleasant AVs and incarnate bosses. Plus, opening with Surveilance/Executioners Strike on that boss or annoying Lt, then dropping back with the Web/Venom/Heavy Burst, then wading back in with Crowd Control and some follow up Shatter/Shatter Armor strikes is just tactically fun.

I think of him as a perfect soldier, ready for any kind of target or situation and using every weapon at his disposal.

*I decided to remake my huntswoman, afer reading this post, im posting the build so yall can pick it apart if ya want.
**I already set suppression on so cloak is suppressed as though i was taking damage/attacking.
***I was pushing for positional defense range/aoe/melee soft cap, and close to perma recharge on pets. As far as costs, I´m not restricted by it.
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Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.954
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

ruin judge: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Single Shot

• (A) Entropic Chaos - Accuracy/Damage
• (3) Entropic Chaos - Damage/Endurance
• (5) Entropic Chaos - Damage/Recharge
• (5) Entropic Chaos - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (7) Entropic Chaos - Chance of Heal Self
• (39) Achilles' Heel - Chance for Res Debuff

• (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
• (7) Steadfast Protection - Knockback Protection

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

• (A) Accuracy IO

• (A) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative)
• (9) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge
• (9) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance
• (11) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (11) Apocalypse - Damage/Recharge
• (40) Achilles' Heel - Chance for Res Debuff

• (A) Superior Dominion of Arachnos - Accuracy/Damage
• (13) Superior Dominion of Arachnos - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (13) Superior Dominion of Arachnos - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (15) Superior Dominion of Arachnos - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (15) Superior Dominion of Arachnos - Damage/Recharge
• (50) Achilles' Heel - Chance for Res Debuff

• (A) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance
• (34) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge
• (34) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (36) Red Fortune - Defense
• (36) Red Fortune - Endurance
• (36) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

• (A) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Recharge
• (19) Enfeebled Operation - Immobilize/Range
• (25) Enfeebled Operation - Endurance/Immobilize
• (25) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Endurance
• (27) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Immobilize/Recharge
• (31) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Immobilize

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

• (A) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance
• (19) Superior Dominion of Arachnos - Recharge/Chance for -Dmg and Terrorize
• (21) Ragnarok - Damage
• (21) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge
• (23) Ragnarok - Damage/Recharge
• (23) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge

• (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up
• (29) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance
• (43) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance
• (45) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance
• (45) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge
• (45) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff

• (A) Flight Speed IO

• (A) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance
• (31) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge
• (33) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (33) Red Fortune - Defense
• (33) Red Fortune - Endurance
• (34) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

• (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
• (29) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
• (39) Force Feedback - Chance for +Recharge
• (42) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
• (42) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
• (43) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance

• (A) Analyze Weakness - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (31) Recharge Reduction IO

• (A) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance
• (37) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge
• (37) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (37) Red Fortune - Defense
• (40) Red Fortune - Endurance
• (42) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

• (A) Accuracy IO

• (A) Call to Arms - Accuracy/Recharge
• (39) Call to Arms - Accuracy/Damage
• (43) Call to Arms - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (48) Call to Arms - Endurance/Damage/Recharge

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

• (A) Impervium Armor - Resistance
• (46) Impervium Armor - Resistance/Endurance
• (46) Impervium Armor - Resistance/Endurance/Recharge
• (46) Impervium Armor - Psionic Resistance

• (A) Kismet - Defense/Endurance
• (48) Kismet - Defense/Recharge
• (50) Kismet - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (50) Kismet - Accuracy +6%

• (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)

• (A) Accuracy IO

• (A) Unbounded Leap - +Stealth

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

• (A) Flight Speed IO

• (A) Miracle - +Recovery
• (27) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery

• (A) Jumping IO

• (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End
• (3) Performance Shifter - EndMod
• (17) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy
• (17) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
• (40) Performance Shifter - Accuracy/Recharge
• (48) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge

• 19% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 19% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 19% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 19% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 19% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 19% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 19% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 19% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 9.88% Defense(Melee)
• 8.31% Defense(Smashing)
• 8.31% Defense(Lethal)
• 5.81% Defense(Fire)
• 5.81% Defense(Cold)
• 4.25% Defense(Energy)
• 4.25% Defense(Negative)
• 4.88% Defense(Psionic)
• 5.5% Defense(Ranged)
• 8.63% Defense(AoE)
• 4.5% Max End
• 39% Enhancement(Accuracy)
• 105% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
• 3% Enhancement(Immobilize)
• 10% FlySpeed
• 120.5 HP (11.25%) HitPoints
• 10% JumpHeight
• 10% JumpSpeed
• Knockback (Mag -8)
• Knockup (Mag -8)
• MezResist(Confused) 4.4%
• MezResist(Immobilize) 6.6%
• 19.5% (0.34 End/sec) Recovery
• 26% (1.39 HP/sec) Regeneration
• 7.88% Resistance(Fire)
• 7.88% Resistance(Cold)
• 1.88% Resistance(Negative)
• 3% Resistance(Psionic)
• 10% RunSpeed
• 1.5% XPDebtProtection

This very likely to be my last post in this forum, and may very well be that last post I make anywhere on the CoH forums, for the rest of time.

Every so often, I'd lurk my way back into the SoA forum and have a look at where this (little?) thread of mine stood, as far a replies and page views was concerned. Right now, this thread (as of this posting) stands at 105 replies ... which is the 6th most highly replied thread in this entire forum (5th place is at 108, but I'm not exactly vying for a move up in the ranking here). Even more impressive though is that this thread has (as of this posting) ... 13,059 views ... which makes it the third most viewed thread in the entire SoA forum overall ... the second most viewed thread in the SoA forum that never got pinned ... and THE most viewed thread (by a long way!) that could in any way be considered a "guide" for building a SoA (in this case, as a Hunts(wo)man).

For me, the most amazing thing about those now useless statistics is that what I did in this thread wasn't all that terrifically "original" since I was just building off the work of Who Came Before Me on this topic, and extrapolating it into theories I could test (and attest to) with my own personal experiences. In a lot of ways, despite being an avid Mids' Jockey, this thread both is (and was) my only attempt at ever writing a "guide" for any archetype ... despite having multiple players in-game who would turn to me for advice on the path of NO GET HITSU!! I blazed with my MA/SR Scrapper ... Redlynne ... starting in Issue 2. But the simple fact of the matter was that Arcanaville "wrote" the definitive text on Defense Protection Schemes and softcapping defense and all of that, so my contributions in that arena were hardly needed, and would have been plowing already well tilled ground.

But the Huntsman ... that was a build strategy that, it seemed to me, offered tremendous potential, and had been tragically underserved as far as advice and experience went. Plus, the available resources on the build were outdated and could use updating. Little did I suspect what my efforts would come to ...

I did it "all wrong" on my way from 1-23 of course. I replicated my early Issue 2-3 experience of focusing on Defense first and foremost, rather than concentrating on Offense (which, of course, turned out to be a mistake I corrected in hindsight). But from that inauspicious beginning, a realization began to take hold, that playing a Huntsman build was something that started off weak, but gradually built in strength ... and never really STOPPED growing more powerful (unless if you gimped yourself). When I finally reached Level 50, got every Set IO invented and slotted, I gazed upon the marvel that I had created ...

Leggs
Because nothing beats a great set of ...


... and was simply in awe of what she could do! It was simply unreal the amount of *POWER* that she brought to ANY team! And it was hilarious watching my teammates on Strike Forces "learn" (sometimes the hard way) to not leave the coverage area of my auras. Anyone around me ... especially and including the squishies ... *LIVED*. Anyone who went off on their own ... suddenly found everything a few orders of magnitude harder than they had been when I was around and nearby.

I *have* a Scrapper.
My first character I ever played (and still have as my "main") in CoH *is* a Scrapper ... Redlynne.
I KNOW what Scrapperlock is ... and the sheer joy it brings to plunge into it headfirst, and drown in it!

But to be able to GIVE Scrapperlock to DEFENDERS and watch them get so royally stoked on it that even the Empaths turned into wild and rabid Offenders ...?

*THAT* ... my fellow soldiers ... was the greatest gift, and joy, of them all.



Leggs was MY GIRL ... and there was no better place for her to be than standing ankle deep in spent brass, mowing down the incoming hordes, burning through bullets and grenades as if she had never ever been a ladies lingerie supermodel before being kidnapped and reprogrammed as a Soldier of Arachnos ... WITH A GUN.



I'm going to miss my girl ... come December 1st ... ... and all the people who were inspired by her journey of discovery.

Thank you all.
May your ammo clips be bottomless, and your grenades never be duds. And remember ... the best place for a Hero to be is on their knees ... just before you fill them full of sweet Hot Lead as a "reward" for their ... impudence.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I don't know if you are still reading this, but your post and character got me interested in the Soldier. I diverged from your approach because I found that against elite bosses I wanted a better single target damage option, and the sudden "appear out of nowhere" stalker nature of a Wolf soldier with bane tricks seemed to work best for the story-arc-exploration that I was doing.

As things turned out, my instincts were to go offense-heavy first, so I didn't have a lot of the leveling issues you seemed to have. Two slots in endurance and keeping a half dozen blue inspirations around covered most things, as his fights were usually sharp and short...the blues for the rare fight that lasted any length of time. I imagine his stealth capability helped with Endurance, he could skip a lot of meaningless fighting and recharge on the way.

I didn't cap ranged defense till the 40s and was relying on two small purples when I was worried about the counterattack (mostly for elite boss fights). There was a major power-up at level 38 with the call reinforcements power, but otherwise it was a fairly steady progression...as you say he started pretty good and just got steadily better. I had a lot more attacks than your build, so my need for recharge was less. (I still ended up with something like 68% global recharge without Haste included, and near-perma-haste, so it isn't like I skimped). I also didn't take the second layer of tactics, preferring to get a little +accuracy out of I/Os to make up for it, which saved a bit of endurance.

That said, when I went incarnate, the alpha slot went to cardiac and it pretty much reduced the need for blues to fights when my endurance was being debuffed. The ability to do sustained full power attacks without inspirations was a sign that, yes, Incarnate was significantly better than just plain level 50.

Anyway...moving to the real point of this post...

When the death of CoH was announced I looked at all my characters. 3 Masterminds, 1 Tanker,1 controller, 1 Blaster, 2 Kheldians and one Corrupter...and I realized that my soldier in many ways had the best of all of them.

He could cap on ranged defense, and had solid defenses in other positions, capping with only a purple inspiration. Not quite as durable as the tanker but close.

His raw offense was similar to the blaster - including the more potent close in melee attacks backing up ranged and aoe punch. The double-assault from leadership more or less matched the blaster inherent bonuses, especially as issue 24 was never coming out.

He had the key "debuff resistance" capability of my corrupter, without the fiddly need to mess with secondary powers to defend himself against the counterattack...plus straight up damage similar to what the corrupter was doing only after he'd taken down half the enemy health.

He had stealth built in, and a nice alpha-strike like a stalker....not as good as a stalker, but his performance the rest of the fight was much, much better.

He had team buffs superior to my masterminds or my corrupter (although he lacked the control of the latter, he despised web grenades as "for wimps")

And finally...as the pets started to accumulate, he began to remind me a bit of a mastermind, although with less control and much more of his power concentrated in himself. But the first pets I got turned those elite boss fights from touch-and-go into "I'll win if I'm not stupid".

Most importantly, he'd gained a personality. Maybe it is that most of the villain content and alignment content came later, but I found content created after Going Rogue to be a lot more emotionally engaging then the early stuff. Because he did a lot of it, he started gaining personality. So when it became clear that the 30+ story arc content didn't support more than a couple characters in terms of leveling to 50 he got the nod...eventually wrapping all the way around in alignment to see the most plots.

And...I finished in time for the incarnate content too. He's now 50+3, played about half the incarnate trials, all of the solo incarnate content and really, is the reason I got to really explore this game in the handful of weeks I had left, when the game death was announced and I was still working through the 25-30 content.


Along the way he invented many "secret identities", although once he became incarnate he stopped bothering, no longer fearing Recluse or anyone else.


The many incarnations of my soldier:

Styelok (Russian for Deadshot) - Arachnos armor until he was no longer under Lord Recluse's authority...whereupon he switched to casual street clothes and weapons that could be concealed under a flack jacket. Villain by reputation, although he moved to Rogue after saving the world a couple times as an Incarnate. As an Incarnate he'd occasionally wear the Arachnos uniform if he was doing a mission for somebody in Arachnos, as a courtesy to show that for now, he's temporarily under their authority. There was an awful period between 25 and 30 where he got drunk and had the crab legs installed. His superiors thought it was hilarious. He had to take a break from identity switching until he did enough favors for a freakshow doc to get them off.

Deadshot - dressed in a faux Longbow Armor, he was a flying assault rifle "hero" of the vigilante sort, with a rep weaker than Styelok (as he couldn't use the mace or the pets, but had really good flying powers instead). Used whenever my soldier was in a mission in direct conflict with Arachnos. He was mostly seen terrorizing Rogue Isles, although there were incidents in Paragon city, most notably rescuing an actual overzealous Longbow agent with a similar rep from legal punishment, just to firm up his fake identity.

Timor (Fear in Latin) - his Midnighter identity, with rogue reputation. Did most magical quests with this role, or explicitly Midnighter oriented quests. Uses a similar disguise spell as Darren Wade provided in the Midnighter infiltration mission. For reasons not clear, the Hat of Disguise which is the focus of the spell is a bowler hat. As the soldier eventually got Darkness based patron powers and Fire/Healing incarnate powers from a certain goddess of magic, for favors done, he could do a pretty convincing fake mage act. But he claimed to be darkness/illusion, and that the Arachnos weapons in particular had strong totemic value to reinforce his illusions, and blasting with raw magic was a crude fallback. He even managed to duplicate the pets without blowing his identity with Aracnos, with help from an insect-themed mad scientist and a tanker associate who dressed up in a Widow outfit. The tendency of things and people to teleport away when badly damaged simulated illusions "failing" pretty well.

Slugger (a pun on clubbing people with mace and shooting them with "slugs") had a red-white-and-blue garish sports-style armor and was a hero identity he retreated into for a while when Ghost Widow was pissed at him for um...events in the early patron arc. This identity was seen as similar to Timor and Styelok in threat level, but the inability to mix in the arachnos bots or magical attacks limited his peak performance. Still it was good enough to team up with the Freedom Phalanx solo adventures and beat up various Praetorian elite bosses in the 40-50 Portal corp stories.

I felt the Dark Astoria incarnate missions really fit his emerging character. Styelok is a bad guy, but he's in it mostly for the challenge...he isn't a sadist or someone who wants to destroy the world, and respects someone who he defeats, but gives him a hard time...or who backs him down with a convincing threat. This makes him able to cheerfully do heroic things as long as it is "fun". So he actually had no real regrets about anything he'd ever done, aside from one betrayal that got patched up later. That means he's a tough nut for that elder god to crack out of the box. So he seemed like a convincing choice for an incarnate to be tapped to try to end that threat. As for the other incarnate content, there were also a lot of ex-praetorians in his supergroup, and the widow and seer pets he eventually acquired were actually those characters "sidekicking" up to help when he did incarnate trials back in Praetoria.

Anyway...thank you for your inspiration. I'm pretty sure none of my other characters would have had nearly as much fun and success exploring the level 30-50 and incarnate content in a mere 3 months...and I would never have even looked at the Soldier without this thread.

I'm now leaving this game with a sense I explored it pretty well, and got a lot of what there was out of it, even though I had not played it all that long. You did that.