Doctor_Kumquat

The fact that this had fallen so far down the thread list is saddening.

Claws4Brutes is mindblowing. Claws4Brutes will change your life. Claws4Brutes will restore your faith in humanity.

Claws/SR is a beast, and even running with a purely SO build while you level up, you can charge into just about anything and rip it to shreds. At level six, you will walk into a room filled with enemies and end them all with one glorious Spin, and you will never look back.

DM/Shield/Pyre Scrapper. It won't do actual GMs since it doesn't have -regen (well, maybe it could if you threw every temp power in the book) but anything short of a GM is fair game. Mindblowing ST dps, softcapped defenses with a self-heal, +max hp, and some resistances for kicks, silly AoE with Soul Drained Fireball and Shield Charge.. If you wanted to make a billion dollar baby, this would be my #1 choice for a versatile win button. There are a few builds that can do certain things better (ill/rads or rad/sonics would kill GMs easier, and there are probably more efficient farmers out there) but it's hard to top for overall no-budget performance.

I burned through the last 4000 sales for Power Seller just a few weeks ago, while looking for arena matches to earn some of the lower weight class badges. I'd go to WWs, buy full stacks of junk common salvage that was clogging the market (hydraulic pistons, fortunes, computer viruses, etc.) for around 300 inf, then relist the stacks for 5 inf to sell asap. I'd buy and relist until I had 4 or 5 stacks of each salvage type up for sale, then go off and do something else for an hour. They'd all have sold by then, so rinse and repeat. I got 4000 sales in under 5 days of low playtime this way. I nominally bought and sold at a loss to save time, but I still made a small profit on the deal.

Of course, if you could find a sympathetic badgehound or two and trade stacks of junk recipes back and forth, it'd be far simpler.

Stone Melee + Dark Armor means that you can combine Fault and Oppressive Gloom to create a Mag 4 PBAoE stun that can be kept up as permanently as you like, leaving everything short of Elite Bosses stumbling around like fools, and you have lots of reliable knockdown to round it out. That alone provides phenomenal survivability in PvE; add in the full-heal in Dark Regen, respectable resists across the board, and impressive exotic protection, and you should stay very healthy against any enemies that you can bunch up and stop from sniping you in a spread-out room. The downside is that relying on heavy-duty stuns and knockdown can hurt your fury generation (which is why I prefer the combo on a tank to a brute), and large crowds that prefer to stay at range can still pack a world of hurt.

Regarding the psi proc in CoF... damage procs in any damage aura tend to be somewhat lackluster. They have a 20% chance of activating every 10 seconds after you activated the power, whether or not there are any foes in range to hit, so you're looking at less than 2 extra damage per second to everything around you over an extended battle. My Ice/Storm controller relied largely on stacking damage procs in his various debuffs, but he could layer on a dozen of them, so it pushed his kill speed from downright glacial to fairly tolerable. If random bursty damage is your thing, you can do it, but I wouldn't expect much from Cloak of Fear, with or without a proc.

On top of all the previously mentioned problems, the very nature of Trick or Treating is not conducive to maintaining high fury (at least not when soloing). Even if you go streetsweep a couple guys to build up a nice head of fury before knocking, you can get a dry spell of several treats to floor it. Combine the low level slotting/power availability with unreliable fury maintenance and very powerful enemies for your level (many of which deal strong negative damage, /Elec's weakness), and you've got a heck of a time ahead of you.

Unless you just really enjoy the randomness that a proc-heavy build offers, there are almost always better things to put in Siphon Life imo. It's a power that begs for high accuracy, damage, recharge, healing, AND endurance slotting, and it's already really hard to get impressive numbers for all five (without resorting to HOs/Purples). The Theft of Essence proc is amazing in something like Dark Regeneration, but only provides a little more endurance than a regular endurance reduction IO if you average it out. Similarly, any IO with a +dam component (even a mako quad) would provide a higher average damage increase than the Zinger proc; Siphon Life is one of DM's big hitters. If you want to keep the Kinetic Combats for the juicy +def, I'd round it out with an Acc/Heal and Heal/Rech from one of the two accurate healing sets (+regen vs. +hp and better enhancement numbers).

While I won't comment too much on the main build (very different direction than I'd take it, but to each his own), here are a few pointers. First, Liquefy deserves way better slotting. The set bonuses are cool and all, but a power that powerful shouldn't be crippled by its actual enhancement values. It can completely trivialize most any battle, so you want max recharge above all else. The defense debuff is much less important than the tohit debuff - by that level, any reasonable character should be slotted to hit well enough normally, not relying on a long-duration debuff like that. With -tohit slotting, the 33% debuff looks more like a 50% debuff, and since you're slotting your blasts for -tohit anyway, you should know that's a Good Thing. Further, the main debuffs (the part you care about) are autohit anyway, so +acc only affects the brief hold at the start, and self-buffing procs are pretty much pointless in a power you're only going to use once every 2-3 minutes at best. Swap the Analyzed Weakness out for either 3 Membrane Hami-Os, or enough Dark Watcher/Dampened Spirits to get around the rech and -tohit cap.

The shields are fine with just three or four slots, really. The 6-slot bonuses aren't very impressive in most resistance sets, and they really don't need the enhancement values (do you really need extra end/rech in the ally bubbles?). If you just have extra slots to burn anyway, I'd use 5 Aegis instead for the massive AoE defense boost and/or give Maneuvers some extra love. On the other hand, while throwing some uniques in Dark Embrace is fine, make sure to at least keep it above 50% res slotting. Chasing a bit of extra psi res is ok, but not at the expense of serious s/l res, and you have what is probably the single most expensive IO in the whole game (Glad Armor +3% def) slotted without the regular Steadfast +3% in sight.

If you're not going to load Tenebrous Tentacles up with extra damage procs (it can take three, not counting the PvP set), slotting for -tohit gets a lot more bang for your buck than extra immob duration imo. It's already long-lasting enough to be permanent without duration slotting, so you need to ask yourself whether you'd like stronger -tohit on everything you fight (Cloud Senses or Siphon Insight) or the ability to keep higher-level bosses snared, which is all the Trap of the Hunters are netting you. Especially since the era of the AE boss farm is dead and gone, it doesn't seem that important.

Oppressive Gloom is pretty great at what it does - a cheap, permanent AoE stun for as long as you stay near melee range - but gets infinitely better if you have another stun to stack on it. It's only Mag 2, so anything stronger than a minion won't be affected otherwise. Dark Pit, while pathetic in isolation, would be a really strong combo with OG - they would stack to disorient even bosses, in a decent AoE. I'd probably take both or not bother. The main catch with using OG is that staying close up can make it hard to maximize your /Dark cone blasts unless you like bouncing in and out of range every few seconds.

Wow. That.. ah.. wasn't that brief.

Father Xmas, do you recall which arc has the endless Gears box? Way back when (thinking I1 here) I remember joining a pug on my controller, that said they were having trouble with a mission (no other info provided). After hiking all the way out to Boomtown, when I went up the elevator I was met with the horrifying yet hilarious scene of literally over 100 puny little gears matching around atop a pile of my teammates' broken bodies, who failed to kill the box before all heck broke loose. That mission still strikes me as one of the most unique things I came across as a noob, yet can't figure out who gives it out.

I realized he was using Vanden's patch, just didn't have a clue what powers those icons would represent, mod or no mod.

Nice build Nintova, but I've got a couple questions. You said you took Cryo Freeze Ray and Stunning Shot as a "boss stopper," but Stunning Shot is a disorient while CFR is a hold; I wouldn't think they would stack on each other, so you'd have to hit a boss twice with one of them to lock them down (or Stunning Shot + Total Focus) which sort of seems to defeat the point. I mean, you could cycle both on two different bosses, or team with a controller to stack things, but they wouldn't give the quick one-two lockdown (unless they function differently than I would expect them to).

Second, what is the particular advantage you find in using Air Superiority over Power Thrust, which you are forced to take anyway? They do comparable damage, though Power Thrust would actually "get them out of your face" as a melee option rather than knock them down while you run. If you wanted AS to quickly deal with them while you readied the slow finishing blow with Total Focus, Power Thrust works fine there as well. Queue TF up as PT activates, and you can usually hit them with both even when they're 30 feet away after the first hit; as long as they're still in range when TF starts, it doesn't matter if they're flying across the room while you punch them. Bone Smasher seems like it would be more useful imo.

First, nice work. Second.. what are those bright orange power icons with the teleport / power boost images? Are those the Mission Teleporter and Mystic Fortune?

Your 2B luck charms must remain on the market for all eternity, to defy anyone who dares to buy up every last one available. Or, ya know, until some other crazy fool with an equally psychotic determination and cash flow comes along to buy even those up.

I'd definitely say a Nova-form Kheld, with a blaster as a decent second.

Blaster - Energy/Energy or Fire/Energy
Scrapper - Claws/Regen or MA/SR
Tanker - SS/Inv
Defender - Emp/Psi or Rad/Sonic
Controller - Earth/Storm
Corruptor - Fire/Dark
Dominator - Plant/Psi
Mastermind - Bots/Traps
Stalker - Energy/Ninjutsu
Brute - Stone/Willpower

It's got such a long recharge that you can't come to rely on it as part of any normal battle tactic, but it's got massive coolness points attached to it. I use it more as a costume emote power than anything, and it's pretty fun to try and get the last hit on an AV with your little freezeray. The immob itself can be useful if you have another immob to quickly stack on an AV/Boss to start the battle off, but that's about it.

Playing an AR blaster but skipping Buckshot seems almost as counterintuitive to me as skipping Flamethrower or Full Auto. Since they shredded its activation time, it's a lightning fast cone that does the same damage as M30 or other standard blaster AoEs (Explosive Blast, Neutrino Bomb, Fistful/Explosive Arrow, etc.) with a 8 second recharge that you can slide right into the rest of your attack chain without skipping a beat. It has 50% knockback, but it doesn't send them flying across the room so much as put them on their back for a few seconds for a quick breather.

M30 does the same damage as it, but from double the range, recharge, and almost double the activation time. I took M30 simply because more AoEs = better, but it's probably the most skippable of AR's four AoE attacks if you have other shinies you want to fit into the build in its place. Because M30 has the same range as Full Auto, you can fire it off right before FA so that the grenade will hit just as you're starting to let loose with the hail of bullets. All the targets will still be hit by FA even though many will get knocked back, so they aren't firing back while getting shredded.

Beanbag is a pretty standard single-target mez power. If you're soloing, or in a team situation without much hard control, you can take nasty debuffers/mezzers out of the equation before they can cause trouble, like Sappers, Sorcerors, or BP Shaman. If you generally feel confident enough to unload a hail of napalm and lead until everything stops twitching, it's not that big a deal, but if you do take it, it can be useful sometimes. It serves a similar purpose as a Snipe in most situations, but only takes them out for 10-20 seconds, not permanently. Very much a personal playstyle/choice issue imo.

On the whole, your power choices look solid. If you can afford a Stealth IO to pair with Cloaking Device, which you said you were going to take for sure, then you could respec out Super Speed without a second thought if you really don't like it as a travel power. Ignite is another little gem you might consider taking, if you find yourself fighting single hard targets on a semi-regular basis instead of just a mass of readily AoEable mooks. With only two other single-target attacks, AR is somewhat lacking when it comes to battling AVs and/or higher level, lethal-resistant bosses. Since you are forced to take Web Grenade anyway, you can use it in conjunction with Ignite to put out some VERY respectable single target damage on whatever the unlucky victim of choice is.

Sonic defenders can build to do all sorts of things, although Sonic Resonance itself does not offer too many IO possibilities. My Sonic/Sonic has a general-purpose teaming build, with all of Sonic/ except for Repulsion and the Cage (been trying to see if I can drop something else to pick it up for STFs) along with the medicine and leadership pools up to rez/veng. His alternate build is for crazy-durable soloing; I dropped all the ally buffs to take Fighting for capped s/l res and around 35% ranged defense (with a stack of lucks to top off whenever it might be needed), Oppressive Gloom and Screech to instantly stun bosses, and a wicked attack chain (though I'd still like to get that Apoc proc for Shriek).

As for the actual sets in Sonic, I stick with three Titanium Coatings because they're cheap, the +HP is handy, and I have no endurance issues anyway. If I had way more toggles or a secondary that was more end-hungry, Impervium Armor is amazing if you can afford it. I would rarely even consider using Aegis unless I really needed the +def. Liquefy gets 3 Membranes for max slot efficiency over set bonuses, though Dark Watcher isn't a bad alternative, and nothing else in the set really even takes IOs.

Yep, epic pools don't count against your 4 allowed power pools. If they did, my blaster would be even more frustrated at not getting to take 5 or 6 pools.

Chain Induction's bouncing was fixed a few issues ago, and now bounces quickly and reliably without reducing xp. It was recently fixed to also bounce correctly even with damage procs in it, which previously reduced the chance to bounce to the same as the chance to proc.

Elec melee as a whole is quite useful for AoE carnage (esp. on an archetype not traditionally known for its AoE potency) though falls a bit short of the mark for single-target killspeeds compared with other stalkers.

The *ONLY* use I can conceivably see for this power is in conjunction with the Contagious Confusion purple set, or MAYBE some damage procs. If you aren't willing to invest a decent chunk of influence into it, and are absolutely deadset on taking it for the look, then just slap an end-redux SO in it and call it good enough. Don't expect it do do anything other than look cool, though.