Biowraith

That's very similar to my build up to that level. Personally I'd take Venom Grenade at 12 rather than 14, but I don't suppose 2 levels makes much difference (or any at all, if you don't exemp).

One thing that jumps out at me is one of your level 1 powers is empty. Obviously it won't be empty in game, but if this were my build: I'd move Crab Armor Upgrade to that power slot, then Longfang back to the level 2 power, then Combat Training: Defensive in the level 4 spot. The only other options for that level 1 slot is Slice, which is ok but nothing special (and a lot of people prefer to avoid melee on their Crab), and Wolf Spider Armor, which I'd avoid as it does almost nothing for a Crab.

Other than that:

Hasten - in the long run you probably won't want 4 slots in this as 3 SOs will get you to the ED softcap (that 4th slot won't contribute much). With IOs you could even get away with 2 at level 50, depending how badly you want to perma hasten. In any case, Crab builds tend to be quite slot intensive, so later on you'll likely find you want to respec a slot or two out of there.

Crab Spider Armor Upgrade - those resist enhancers don't really provide much as the resists in this power are miniscule. That said you probably will want those two slots in the long term, to slot the -kb Steadfast IO and the 3% defense Steadfast IO.


In the immediate future I'd look to get a couple more defense enhancers in Tactical Training Maneuvers, and maybe a bit more enhancement in Venom Grenade (either recharge to get that debuff out more often, or damage since it's a decent damage power in its own right).

You could also look into frankenslotting cheap IO sets into your powers to get a little more mileage out of them, but that's a whole guide in itself (I forget who wrote it).

1) Not really. Huntsman will be a lot more survivable (lots more defense, passive mez protection) and provide a bunch of team buffing that the blaster doesn't have access to (or does, but in a far more limited fashion). Blaster should have more raw damage, possibly a smidgen more mez options (build/secondary dependent), but is a lot more fragile. As for Corruptor, it'll vary greatly depending on which secondary, but generally Huntsman is still more survivable, less difference in the damage, and Corruptor will probably offer more buff/debuff options.

2) To be honest, there's likely not much in it. It'll depend on how either one is built, obviously, but the main difference is theme/aesthetics (i.e. do you want the crab legs or not, do you want the gun or not) rather than any major differences in strengths and weaknesses. Either one can be built to solo well and both are pretty much always a great addition to any team.

Yeah, Soul Mastery is a pretty nice pool.

Gloom is a very good ranged single target attack, fairly quick cast time with a bit heavier damage than most due to it being a DoT, but thankfully the DoT doesn't take long to complete.

Soul Tentacles is decent AoE damage albeit with a lengthier DoT, in addition to the obvious advantage of mass immobilization (with a reasonable cast time).

Dark Obliteration is also a solid AoE - nothing spectacular, but it pulls its weight. The -tohit may help a bit if you're not softcapped, or in cases of enemies with +tohit or -def.

I've not used the patron version of Darkest Night, but it's a great power in the Dark Miasma set. I imagine even with the significantly lower debuff values that it's still pretty useful here too - even if you don't need the -tohit, the -dam will take the edge off any attacks that get through, and it's a good tool for corner pulling entire spawn(s).

I've no experience with the Widow pet, so can't really comment there, but I've not heard of it being significantly better or worse than any of the other patron pets.

Leviathan is the popular choice due to the synergy between Venom Grenade and Bile Spray (the late addition of more -res in Arctic Breath didn't hurt its case any either), but that aside Soul would make for a solid choice too.

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http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...th/Stygian.jpg
http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...ith/Pinchy.jpg

I kinda got lazy about bios after the first year or so.

I'd quite like to have Strato's suggestion available. Although rather than the self-rez, if we're making new powers I'd like to see an AoE - some sort of rain of stones (fairly common for earth magic in fantasy settings), or an AoE version of Stone Spears (though I'm not sure how you make that visually distinct from Stalagmites).

Failing that, power pool customization so I can take the Ice pool, colour it brown, LaLaLaLaLaICan'tHearYou away the ice debuff effects, and call them crystals.

Of the powers you've listed:

1. CT: Offensive. Largely redundant with the setup you describe, and can't be used as a set/special mule. Skip.

2. TT: Leadership. More valuable than CT:O as the tohit buffs will help against certain enemies with +def, plus the +perception can be useful (think night widow smoke grenades).

3. Assault. A solid choice given that it requires no slotting, but you'd maybe need to go the Cardiac route to power it on top of everything else.

4. WA Web Grenade. Useful for the reasons you stated, unsure how well it works with just the base slot.

5. Aim. Works quite well with just the one slot, so definitely a contender.

6. Wolf Spider Armor? Utterly redundant. Unless you need/want to slot another resistance special/unique IO and don't have space in your other resistance powers, it does close to nothing for a Crab (tiny amount of resistance, and Crabs already have Tank level mez protection - on the very rare occasions something gets through that, it'll probably get through Wolf too).


So of those, I'd pick between TT:Leadership, Assault, Aim and Web Grenade - depending whether you prefer active vs passive and noting that you may find you need to take measures re: endurance if you take both toggles.

Also worth considering is the concealment pool - even if you have no interest in stealth type powers, they're somewhere to drop a LotG +rech. Aid Self may be worth a look too, though you'd maybe need to trim a slot or two from elsewhere to get proper use out of that.

And if you picked up Assault, I'd also give strong consideration to Vengeance if you team at all.

I suspect such a system would channel us into the traditional mmorpg team model, making it harder to run with the take-whoever-wants-to-team approach and instead have teams refusing to start without a tank, a backup/off tank (both of whom must have taken and heavily slotted their taunt, maybe presence pool too), dedicated healers, etc.

That or there'd be an increase in people building the buff/debuff-heavy teams where it really doesn't matter who's got aggro.

I'm getting a lot of the old "Are you sure you clicked/queued that power? I don't think you did" lag effect, where queued powers unqueue themselves, and clicked powers sometimes don't register.

I'm also crashing a bit more than usual, with a new crash dialogue that I've not seen before: during a mothership raid the sound started to loop, but rather than crash outright and give me the error report box, I instead got a popup saying it thought I was probably going to crash soon and would I like to a) crash now, or b) wait and hope I don't crash. I was still able to keep playing with that dialogue up, but when I selected option b) it then proceeded to crash. I'm unsure what would have happened if I'd just moved the dialogue to one side and ignored it.

My preferred method of running TFs has always been: smash everything between the door and the objective(s). I'd go along with speed runs occasionally, but I didn't enjoy them half as much. I'm in it for fighting hordes of enemies as much - sometimes more than - for the shiny at the end.

That said, I'm not too keen on clearing the entire map on every mission.

Thankfully, so far the vast majority of TFs I've been on have taken my preferred approach, with only one or two wanting to clear the entire map.

So TFs are more fun for me now.

Hooray.

The only things I can think of are the Edict and Sovereign uniques (another 5% def and 10% res), Aid Other (to heal them when they inevitably take damage), and Provoke (to keep aggro off them and on you).

How much of a difference that'll make will depend on what sort of difficulty settings you run - if you're doing x6 to x8, they'll probably still die pretty fast; mine usually don't last a single spawn, so I mostly reserve them for cracking single hard targets.

I'd say yes, a D3 is just fine as is. But I still IO'd out mine - personally I went for +rech (more Tar Patch, Howling Twilight, Fearsome Stare, and a smaller gap in the Tentacles-Nightfall combo, etc), and +dam / procs. I'd agree that I see the most improvement from this in solo situations, but the more frequent -res and extra damage helps in teams too, especially in AV fights.

I'm biased due to them being the first two sets I used for defenders, but I'm very fond of Dark Miasma and Kinetics for AV fights.

Kinetics primarily due to the masses of -dam it can stack, reducing most AVs to minion level damage, along with its ability to keep the team topped up on both health and endurance. Of course the +rech, +dam, and weak-but-spammable -regen help too.

Dark Miasma because it also provides masses of -dam (slightly less than Kin, but still well beyond the other sets), and even with AV inherent debuff resistance, it can still stack enough -tohit to make a difference. It also has a moderate amount of -res and -regen; while other sets do those things better, it has enough to give most teams the offense boost they need to defeat the AV its just debuffed down to a harmless sack of hitpoints.

I actually prefer both sets to Rad for AV fights due to the increased mitigation they provide in that particular scenario.

I can sort of see where the OP is coming from in terms of the set being shallow, as it does perhaps rely too heavily on just a couple of key powers - Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift.

Don't get me wrong, the rest of the set certainly contributes, as je_saist has quite thoroughly mapped out, but none of that really provides the mitigation other sets do, nor does it pull the set ahead of the pack for offense.

With Fulcrum not coming until 32, the early levels can feel a little underwhelming. Your debuffs are single target, and even if you do have the patience to keep a team ID'd the damage resistance it provides is only useful against fairly specific enemy groups. You do have a pretty beefy melee heal, but other sets are providing much more complete protection to the team during this time. Meanwhile the famed kinetics offense hasn't really kicked off yet - you're looking at double or triple stacked siphon power, which although certainly helpful, isn't really streets ahead of the damage boost many other sets will also be providing (mostly through -res, though there's some +dam out there too). So that just leaves Speed Boost, and while it's a hell of a buff, it does make the set feel a little bit of a one trick pony (although that trick will get you welcomed to, and indeed sought after by teams far and wide).

Course, once you do hit 32 you get trick number two, and it's a doozy. Once you have Fulcrum Shift, the relative lack of mitigation fades into the background as you turn the entire team into supercharged juggernauts of destruction. It's still a pretty one-dimensioned set, but now you're truly the king of that dimension.

So if the OP hasn't already, I'd say at least stick it out until 33-34. Take the advice from this thread as to the other powers in the set, and then see how Fulcrum grabs you; it really is a game changer for Kinetics. You may still feel it's not the set for you but at least you'll have a fuller picture of how it performs.

I have both a Crab and a Bane (and indeed a Night Widow and Fortunata), and I love them both. I do however have a favourite child, and it's the Crab - both in terms of my "fun" playing the char, and in terms of how effective it is.

It's perhaps simplifying the differences a bit, but basically I find that the Crab is more survivable (similar defense, more resists, serum) and better at AoE, while the Bane is better at single target. However, I find that my Crab isn't actually *that* bad at single target (especially with pets out), and that the lead in AoE makes more of a difference to me than the Bane's lead in single target - perhaps because I favour the target rich environment difficulty options.

In fact my Crab is probably my favourite character overall, not just within the VEATs.

With the slots freed up by inherent Fitness, my Crab picked up both Assaults (it bothered me that I didn't have space for them previously). This however tipped his endurance balance a bit too far into the realms of running dry, so for Alpha I went with Cardiac. And now he's very much in tankmage territory, almost never needing to slow down or stop.

My Fortunata will probably go for Cardiac too as she has to pop the blues if she's in a scenario that warrants full use of her AoE chain... but I kinda want to get Spiritual to bring Psychic Wail and Aura of Confusion available more often (although, with ED'd recharge and decentish global bonuses, I'm not sure the return would be worth it there).

My Night Widow, eh, I'll probably get Musculature - she doesn't have much that really needs more recharge, her endurance management is fine, and Nerve doesn't offer her anything.

My Bane is in a similar boat to my Night Widow.

Watched this, and it was about as balanced and reasonable as you'd expect from previous forays into the subject matter.

I especially liked when, after telling us how scary gaming addiction is, how it's wrecked lives and outright kills more than 2 people per year in South Korea... the ex-addict advises gamers to "put down the controller, go out, and get smashed". (the interviewer suggests the same thing earlier in the documentary, though far less explicitly)

For my crab I didn't go pure melee, but I did take all the melee attacks and after my initial AoE volley I usually charge in and start meleeing (interspersed with further AoE if needed). It worked out fairly well for my crab levelling up, and since hitting 50 and piling on the IOs he's become a bit of a monster.

On mine I built for positional defense, a moderate amount of recharge, and 1-2 procs in each attack. Well, I say I built for positional defense, but I actually didn't have it too much higher than the base for quite a long time. It meant certain bosses etc required a bit of kiting and jousting, but for the most part it still worked out fine, I was still rushing into melee on a regular basis and coming out on top.

Since reaching 50 I've respecced into the fighting pool and tweaked my build a bit to increase survivability - still not actually soft capped, but a lot closer. Besides large spawns of PPD Kheldians (so much -def ) and to a lesser extent Cimerorans, it no longer makes much difference what I'm fighting; pretty much everything gets a faceful of slashy crab arms now

I'm trying to decide what to take on my own Dark(/Dark/Dark) Defender. I'm torn between Musculature for the obvious damage boost, along with even more tohit debuff, and Spiritual for the very attractive extra recharge.

On the one hand I'm already tohit debuffing most things into the ground, but the extra would be nice for e.g. AVs that resist it, and soloing becomes that bit less tedious with more damage. On the other hand, more Tar Patches, more Fearsome Staring, more Soul Draining, more Howling Twilights, which will ultimately have a similar effect to the extra damage (via more frequent/stacked -res) and the extra tohit debuff (more frequent/stacked Fearsome Stare and Dark attacks). Plus the extra healing on an already beefy heal would be amusing.


I guess ultimately both are available to swap in and out as desired, but I have so many alts I'm not sure how viable it'd be to [find time to] get the components for both with all the other chars I'm running too.