ClawsandEffect

There's a slight problem with that: Trial accounts can't send PMs.

There's a very good reason for it, but it still sucks.

The reason is as follows: RMT spammers like to use trial accounts to peddle their wares, because a trial account is free and they lose nothing by it getting banned.

RMT stands for Real Money Trade. It is when someone offers to sell you in-game items or currency for real world money. It is very much against the terms of service of the game and anyone caught doing it is banned immediately with no appeal possible (it is one of the few things that have a mandatory ban punishment)

So, because the RMTers were using trial accounts to spam people with their website and offers to sell them stuff, trial accounts were limited to only being able to talk in Local, Team, and the help channel (which you can type /hc before your message to talk in)

I shouldn't have to mention it, but do not, under any circumstances, do business with any of the RMT sites. You have to give them your account information for some of their "services" and they can and will use YOUR account to spam people because they can't do it with trials. That will get your accont banned for something you didn't do, so it's not a good idea.

I'm not trying to discourage or scare you away from playing, but it's something you should be aware of. If you really want to get the full experience of the game, you can always set up a full account for a month to see if you want to continue playing. (I suggest this course of action)

Well, Electric Armor and Fiery Aura both have a heal that can be 5 slotted with Doctored Wounds for a 5% recharge bonus. Any PBAoE attacks can be slotted with Obliteration for 5% recharge bonuses. (every set has at least one, most sets have at least 2) You can slot any single target attacks with Crushing Impact for 5% recharge bonuses.

On most tank builds you can max out 5% recharge bonuses pretty easily, giving you leeway to slot Multi Strike in your damage aura without losing any potential recharge bonuses.

I'm usually less concerned about recharge than I am defense on most of my tank builds. More often than not recharge doesn't help my survivability as much as additional defense does, so I consider it a secondary concern.

Blasters outdamage the other ranged ATs by a very wide margin. The only AT that even comes close to (and occasionally surpasses) blaster ranged damage is dominators. You will never see a defender or corruptor hitting the levels of carnage a well played blaster can dish out.

On a full team with a little bit of support or a good tank, blasters are fully capable of making melee ATs redundant or useless. I've played a scrapper on teams with several blasters, and entire spawns were dead before I even got to them in order to attack.

They solo pretty well too, provided you know what you're doing with them. Blasters require much more awareness of your environment than a lot of other ATs. IF you don't notice a boss or nasty LT in a spawn you're attacking you will have difficulty, but once you get a handle on your strengths (ridiculous damage output) and weaknesses (not much in the way of mitigation) you can do some crazy things on a blaster.

Couple examples: A blaster has soloed an ITF. And it was a Fire/Fire blaster at that. A blaster has also soloed a Giant Monster.

I don't think blasters will ever become obsolete. There is always room on a team for someone that kills things stupid fast.

You have played a Ninja Blade stalker right?

Ninja Blade IS Katana. It loses Lotus Drops, and the powers are re-ordered, but otherwise they are the exact same set.

Illusion won't work very well for Dominators for the simple reason that it only gets 3 powers in the entire set that get any benefit at all from Domination, and most Illusion players I've seen skip one of them (Flash)

On another note, Dark Blast for blasters is extremely unlikely to happen. They'd have to gut the set horribly to make it work.

Why? Because blasters already get 2 of the key powers in their PPPs. Nightfall is in it, and Soul Tentacles is identical to Tenebrous Tentacles with a different name. I suppose they could replace one of them with Dark Obliteration, but that still leaves 2 powers in need of replacing.

What's the 3rd power you ask? Life Drain. If the devs continue with their track record, blasters will never get a real self-heal power in a primary or secondary powerset (No, Drain Psyche is NOT a self heal, if you use it while your health is in the red it will not save you)

Super Reflexes wouldn't work very good for tanks. I don't have anything major against them getting it, it would just be a crappy set for the job tanks are meant to do. Try tanking a DE mission that has a lot of Quartz dropping LTs with an SR and let me know how that works out for you. Anything with higher than normal accuracy will shred an SR tank in seconds flat. SR doesn't get any significant resistances or HP buffs or a heal or anything other than pure defense. If something bypasses that defense your tank is going to drop like a toilet seat.

I'd like to keep at least 1 set that is unique to each AT, but unfortunately that will be kind of hard to do now, since most of them have already been proliferated. Ice Armor and Melee are the only tank exclusive sets. Illusion, Poison, and Ninjitsu are the only other sets that are unique. (I'm not counting Blaster and Dominator secondaries because they are ALL unique because of the nature of those ATs)

I'd like to see tanks and brutes get Spines, but I'm aware that it's unlikely. I'd also like Regen on brutes, but that probably won't happen either.

A reworked form of Illusion would be cool on Dominators, but it probably wouldn't be very popular. One the the major things that would have to be done is replace some powers with others that will get benefit from Domination. As it currently stands, Illusion Control would make the ATs inherent nearly useless (it would be click mez protection on a long recharge and an end refill, and that's about it)

That's because you are actually SKed up to one level below the leader. If the leader is above level 30 the TF sees your "real level" as being above the max level of the TF, so it exemps you accordingly.

Example: The leader of a level 30 TF is level 38. Everyone on the team is thus SKed up to level 37. When you start the TF it only checks your current level, since it sees you as being level 37 it exemps you to 30 because you are above the max level of the TF.

Pretty sure it's working as intended.

I'm also keeping in mind the fact that a character born and raised in Praetoria may very well have different ideas about what constitutes right and wrong.

There are lots of examples of instances on our own world where different cultures have differing views on morality, so it is not much of a stretch to imagine that a world with a very different history may have some very weird ideas about ethics.

In Praetoria it is reasonable to think that a character raised there may view killing someone before they can become a larger threat as the right thing to do. Whether or not *I* think it's the right thing to do has no real bearing on what my character believes, because as I already noted, my character is not me, and doesn't need to believe the same things I do. I wouldn't kill someone unless I was left with no other choice (kill or be killed situations)

The Cleopatra/Washington dilemma is a good example of that. You are put in a situation where you have to kill one or the other. It is set in such a way that if you let them both live, you're probably going to be screwed.

If you betray Washington and let him live, he's going to use his rank to see to it that you are killed or imprisoned.

If you betray Cleopatra and let her live, she my talk Praetor White into believing that you and Washington are both traitors attempting to frame her, with the end result of you both being killed or imprisoned.

It's a lose/lose situation. If the one you betray remains alive, either one of them has the clout to make things difficult for you. It's not really an ethical issue as much as it is a survival issue. And you are forced into a situation where you have to decide which one's death will benefit you more.

I think that's the whole point of Praetoria. There really aren't situations where you can do the "morally correct" thing and not have it result in disastrous consequences for you.

I have to chime in on this one. I learned this lesson the hard way. I got to my mid 40's and had everything slotted up (my main is Claws/Regen btw), and got to thinking "Man, I'm freakin' immortal here!"

Then I ran into my first Malta mission, and that tune changed rapidly. /Regen is a set that can (and frequently will) go from "I'm unkillable" to "What the hell just happened?!" in a split second. And there's a bit of a learning curve while you figure out how to manage your clicks.

(Quick Hint: If you're taking lots of Psi damage and you're low on Health, Moment of Glory isn't going to help any)

I make the choices the game lets me make.

Because I am aware that it is only a video game and the moral choices my character makes do not have to agree with my personal ethics.

Saying "But I don't WANT to do that." is the same thing as an actor declining a role because he disagrees with the character's morals.

The character is not you, and doing bad things while playing a video game character (or portraying a character in a movie or play) does not make you a bad person.

So, keeping that in mind, I have no problem with the things I'm made to do in Praetoria.

The rest of EvilRyu's post offers good advice, except the quoted part.

You DO get a little bit of smashing and lethal defense in Heightened Senses, but it's not a whole lot. It IS, however, more S/L defense than you get of any positional defense at all in the set (which is a nice round 0%).

Since you get a good amount of E/N/F/C defense out of Heightened Senses, it would be a good plan to build on those. With the little bit of S/L defense that Heightened Senses also offers you can add to that with defense from Weave (since Weave covers both typed and positional so it will stack with any other defenses that you may have)

It isn't too difficult to get large amounts of typed defense, especially with Willpower as your secondary.

In short, don't bother with positional defense on a Willpower anything, typed will both be easier to acquire and serve you better.

Pretty sure if you have one in two different auto powers it will check for both of them at the same time. That means you could have neither fire, one of them fire, or perhaps even both at once. You probably won't have both of them fire at once very often, so I wouldn't plan a build around that happening consistently (still slot for end reduction in other words)

Me neither, it's a pretty important power.

All of the toggles in WP. In fact I suggest taking the entire set with the exception of the rez, and Strength of Will is usually optional.

You don't NEED Tough and Weave, but I HIGHLY recommend taking them

You don't strictly need it, but if you have room for it, it's nice to have.

Depends on whether you took Stamina or not. If you didn't, you should put 1 or 2 end reductions in, and 3 resist/defense. If you DID take Stamina, you may not need any end reductions at all, and can save a slot or two per power (I still recommend putting at least 1 end reduction in them)

Hope that helps, I can slap together a build for you later if you like.

I'll line up right behind him.

I make characters based on whatever cool idea pops into my head (it's MY character, so I don't really care if anyone else thinks the idea is cool), if the character makes it past level 25 or so, I'll start looking into min/maxing it according to whatever goal I have in mind for it.

I have 5 or 6 characters that are heavily IOed, a few more that are moderately IOed, and a slew that are still running SOs or basic IOs.

And just because I know someone is going to reference my post about building an Invuln/DB tank to solo AVs to try and prove this post to be a lie, I've had an idea for one for a while now, I just haven't got around to building it because I've been playing other things. The only thing I need to do is check and see if the name I want is available (it should be, but you never know)

That's funny. I remember a LOT of complaints from people who had the game crash on them because the lag was so ridiculous.

If you have a computer that can handle that much information at once, awesome. But why would you want to make things more frustrating for people who don't have that kind of system?

It's not just server side issues that are the problem. The more people in a zone, the more problems people who don't have top of the line computers will have. If you increase the cap on people allowed in a zone, you will basically be saying "Buy a better computer or you can't participate in this event".

Sorry, but people who have no trouble playing the game in normal situations shouldn't have to upgrade in order to do certain things. The current zone cap helps alleviate some of those problems by limiting the amount of information that needs to be sent to client side.

You don't need capped defenses at all with that combo. I'd say get ranged defense into the mid-20's (which is pretty easy to do without gimping powers) and let your Radiation Infection and to hit debuffs take care of the rest.

Radiation Infection alone will floor most enemies' to-hit, but there's always those times when something runs out of range of it and starts shooting at you. It'll be rare, thanks to Tenebrous Tentacles, but it will still happen from time to time (TT isn't going to immobilize everything in a spawn 100% of the time, and bosses will resist it)

Being Rad/Dark, you should NEVER need to enter melee range for any reason, so hovering with moderate ranged defense will make you practically immortal when combined with your debuffs.

I'm not all that great with Rad/Dark, but I'll see if I can find some time to throw together a build for you when I get home.

You and I clearly have very different ideas about what balance consists of.

I like a game where each AT has it's role, and they are more or less equal. This game is not perfect in that regard, but it comes close enough that I'm happy with it. I do not feel that the AT that is the best at keeping itself alive should also be the best at dishing out damage.

From everything you keep spewing out, my take on YOUR idea of balance is:

You want a game where tankers do everything the best and you only need a team when you feel like having spectators.

Because that's how they do it in the comics.

Quit with the ******* scrapper envy already.

I wish my scrapper could survive a +4 tower buffed Lord Recluse with no help, but do you see me lobbying and complaining every chance I get to have them buffed because I don't think it's fair that another AT can do something mine can't? No, you don't, and you never will. Because I understand that it would be unbalanced if scrappers could both survive the best AND deal the most damage.

You have glossed over or outright ignored every single example given in this thread of something a tank can do that no other AT can accomplish. And you keep going right back to the "Scrappers can solo AVs and tanks can't! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!" that you've been spewing for at least 2 years now.

If you want people to treat you with courtesy and respect, stop acting like a child every time someone says something you don't like.

Once again, you are saying that tanks should not only have the highest survivability, but they should deal more damage than anything else too.

In comic books that can work, because who wins and loses is determined solely by the writer.

This is not a comic book. Who wins and loses in the game is determined by a set of rules and programs.

Making it so one AT survives better AND deals more damage than anything else is not fair to players of the other 13 ATs. It really is THAT simple, and you keep trotting out weak argument after weak argument, consistently using comic books as an example, when comic books do not apply to a balanced video game in the slightest.