ClawsandEffect

I would have thought the longer range on Psi would have made it better for PvP.

3 slotting Boost Range will make it perma with no global recharge needed.

If you have the slots, 5 Doctored Wounds is the way to go for Aid Self. If you skip the Heal/End you get ED capped recharge and about 88% heal enhancement. Or you can skip the Recharge and ED cap the heal instead.

I'd slot Cloak of Fear with 5xSiphon Insight.

It gives you the same S/L defense bonus as Kinetic Combat, which will let you save some slots and cash. Gives decent accuracy, which CoF needs, and somewhat better end reduction than Cloud Senses.

"An Empath should buff the tank and no one else, because it's the tank's job to keep the team alive"

This is commonly spewed alongside "Putting Healing Aura on autofire makes you a good healer"

Also commonly said with "Empathy = Healer"

Empathy is so much more than just a "healing" set, but it is a very common misconception (still!) that Empathy is only good at healing and nothing else.

Ironically, I don't even have an Empathy character, but my wife does, and I can tell a good one from a bad one.

I dunno. When I fall over 350 feet and sprain my ankle, it feels pretty super.

If I were to fall that far in the real world, well, anyone looking at me afterward would have difficulty determining what parts of my body are what, because I would be a puddle of red goo with some white bits poking out of it.

So, yeah, the fact that I take some damage from falling doesn't bother me at all.

My Rad/Sonic Defender has exactly ONE AoE attack (Howl). On teams he mostly debuffs and takes a few potshots here and there.

However, once we get to the big bad, he switches gears and turns into a single target demon. All debuffing stops except for his toggle debuffs, and he just starts slinging Shriek-Scream-Shriek-Shout until the AV drops (which usually doesn't take very long with him on the team)

Incidentally, I soloed Kraken the other day with the same character. It was a LONG fight, but I took him down using no temp powers and very few inspirations. If I didn't have the single target damage output I do, that would have been impossible.

Of course, my particular defender is built with the specific intention of being a "big game hunter", so single target is the way to go if you're doing that.

If mez was really so huge of a problem, there would be very few level 50 controllers or defenders. Or Corruptors, or Masterminds, or Blasters.

If mez was really as crippling and impossible to overcome as you keep saying it is, everyone would have gotten frustrated and stopped playing those ATs completely. Doesn't seem to have happened that way.

I'd say the simple fact that there ARE a lot of level 50 support ATs is pretty good (albeit anecdotal) evidence that your theory is flawed, and mez isn't as big of a deal as you make it out to be.

Arcanaville makes a good point. Melee passive mez protection only protects that particular character that has it. Mezzing them first (which is active protection) protects the entire team from that enemy's mezzes. And the Controller/Defender sets that have mez protection in them? Yeah, they are protecting the whole team with those, not just themselves.

Some ATs are designed to solo better, and some are designed to team better. What you're saying is that the better teaming ATs need to solo better. What do the better soloing ATs get in that deal? How is it fair that support ATs should solo better, but melee ATs shouldn't team better in return?

Again, support ATs can do things that a melee AT can't even HOPE to do.

Show me a scrapper that can debuff an enemy'e defense, to-hit, damage dealt, damage resistance, recharge rate, and regen.....ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Show me a brute that can buff their allies' defense, regeneration, recovery, accuracy, damage, recharge rate, and keep them healed....ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

That's right, scrappers and brutes can do NONE of those things. Their response to every situation is: Hit it until it falls down. They get passive mez protection to make up for the fact that they have little to no versatility on a team.

When scrappers and brutes gain the ability to buff, debuff, and control like a support AT, maybe THEN your demands for passive protection will be more reasonable. As it stands, you want support to be able to do everything melee can do and more, without melee getting the same consideration at all. You want to talk about binary? Why is it fair that a support AT can buff, debuff, heal, control and generally support their team better than a melee AT EVER will, but it somehow isn't fair that they lack passive mez protection?

It's called balance. Support ATs have one major weakness: Lack of mez protection. But they can do all kinds of other things WAY better than the ATs that have mez protection. I, and a lot of other people, would call that FAIR. But you never even consider all the things that support ATs can do that melee can't in your demands that support ATs get basically the ONE thing melee can do that they can't.

Incarnate stuff is time-consuming, apparently by design.

I would wager a guess that it is because the developers weren't intending for EVERY level 50 character in existence to become an Incarnate. I personally have 6 level 50s over 5+ years of playing, with a few more in the 40s that I could concievably get to 50 in a reasonable time frame. I'm only planning on fully Incarnate slotting a couple of them, and the rest will mostly be stopping at the Alpha slot.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really good at playing my main couple characters, and there isn't much content I haven't gotten through just fine with them. Which makes me wonder: How many of these reports of Trapdoor being too hard are coming from people dusting off a level 50 character they haven't played in months? Stands to reason that if you haven't played thath character in a while, jumping into something more difficult would be frustrating. Hell, if I log my Claws/Regen in after not playing him for a few weeks I faceplant repeatedly until I get back into a rhythm with his click heals.

Why the obsession with Incarnate slotting all 35 of your level 50s? (making up a number, I know there are people with that many 50s) You don't really expect to actually PLAY all of them regularly enough to make it worth the time spent, do you?

Just run through the stuff with 2 or 3 of your favorites and call it good. That's what I'm doing, my main scrapper, brute, and defender are going all the way through it, the rest probably won't be, because I don't play them as often, so I see no point in doing all that with them if they are just going to sit there.

They are never going to do that massive of an overhaul of how that many entire powersets work.

That doesn't just break the Cottage Rule, it annihilates it and then incinerates the pieces of it.

Wow, this thread went downhill since I was here last.

Granted, I was kind of being a dick myself earlier in the thread, but it seems to have gotten worse since then.

I actually don't even remember what I said, I just remember someone annoyed me and I responded to that.

I've come to realize that in arguing with the more obnoxious posters on these forums, I've been acting just like them. And I'm not particularly happy about that.

I suppose there's a lesson there.