Doctor_Kumquat

You don't need to join a Hami Raid to get a HO - if you're dirt poor, just finish a STF or LRSF, and if you have a few million inf to throw around, the acc/mez HOs on the market are cheaper and more available than you'd think, as long as you have a little patience.

For a specifically "wind"-based character, not as generically weather-based, I might suggest a Gravity/Storm controller. Gravity can be handwaved as not gravitational anomalies but holding them in place and throwing them around with whirlwinds, since the visuals are almost identical, Storm is obviously filled with stuff like Gale, Tornado, and Hurricane, and they go together pretty well. Gravity's AoE immobilize won't prevent knockdown, so cages + Freezing Rain will keep them from running out of the field but not keep them from flopping around like fish, and Wormhole will let you shove entire groups over to a corner where you can keep them pinned in place with Hurricane and Lightning Storm while they get ground into dust.

QoL upgrade from the very handy bind Shadow Ravenwolf mentioned to adjust your targeting focus on the fly:

/bind ctrl+key beginchat /bind key targetcustomnext

After entering that, hitting control + key at any point will bring up a chat prompt where you can type any enemy name or substring of a name to instantly make a new targeting bind.
In short, ctrl+t gene will make t automatically target the generals in the 3rd mission of the ITF, instead of hunting through the crowd for them, making dozens of different macros for all your common priority targets, or typing out a whole new bind each time.

I don't have a link atm, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a screenshot from many issues back where a single boss defeat (finishing the last mission of a TF) generated a piece of base salvage, invention salvage, Pool A recipe, Pool B recipe, Pool C recipe, and costume recipe. Whether Purples and/or the pool C random drops from bosses can drop in addition to a pool A drop, I don't know... but I do know you can get plenty of other types together.

(Minor note - use the short forum export option when posting builds; we don't need the giant version like the Dual Pistol build has. Also, apologies for my own Wall o' Text response; I tend to ramble when I get tired and bored.)

Welcome to the world of IOs. While it can be a bit intimidating at first to make the jump to the big leagues, IO slotting doesn't have to be all that complicated, and coming to ask on the forums is probably the biggest step you could make, so bravo. Fulmens & Crew have already pointed you towards some good general slotting tips, so I'll try to be a bit more specific to what you've presented here. Apologies if my review seems a bit brutal at times, but I'm just trying to illustrate some common IO pitfalls to avoid for next time, and you've provided some beautiful case studies. I'll start with the Electric one.



Checking the set bonus list, I see you've focused on building up your ranged defense; I did the same on my archer, and I can say it works fairly well... provided that you still keep the slotting in your actual powers as close to optimized as possible while getting there. It does a blaster no good to increase their durability but sacrifice all their damage that made them roll a blaster in the first place. Lockdown, Thunderstrike, and Mako's Bite work very well for this, along with Blessing of the Zephyr, though BotZ is going to be nerfed to roughly half of its current value when I17 hits. Since you have two sets of BotZ slotted, subtract about 3% from your total ranged defense when trying to see if you've got 'enough.'

While building an Electric blaster for sapping purposes is a perfectly fine build goal, slotting up Ball Lightning for end mod over damage is not a very efficient way to do so, since it only drains 7% endurance at base values. Short Circuit and Power Sink are your real heavy lifters when you want stuff drained, sapping 35% endurance each, unslotted, with the guaranteed 10 second -recovery in Short Circuit. While a one-two punch of Short Circuit-Power Sink should be enough to floor even most +2 enemies, if both are slotted for draining, but throwing in the efficacy adaptors in Ball Lightning adds just a few percent. Stick some Positron's Blasts in there if you want to rack up some nice set bonuses, or frankenslot for max efficiency (since none of the targeted AoE sets have good recharge).

BIG point here though - that Perf. Shifter Chance for +End in Short Circuit and Power Sink can actually give the ENEMIES extra endurance back if it activates, not you, since it applies to the target of the power, which in an attack power is the enemy. Unless you want to take away all your enemies' endurance only to hand 10 points back to them, unslot that pronto.

You six-slotted Build Up with the Gaussian set, but left Aim with just the base slot. Gaussian's is fine, and has awesome bonuses (although the low recharge personally irks me), but since both Aim and Build Up are amazingly useful tools in any blaster's arsenal, it seems a shame not to give Aim even one more slot. Using two L50 generic +Rech IOs will provide ~83% recharge, which is pretty darn close to the cap if you're short on slots. If you CAN spare a second slot, a common slotting trick is to use one generic +Rech with the +Rech and Rech/To-Hit IOs from Adjusted Targeting. This will cap recharge, with a small +Tohit boost and a +2% global damage buff for the set.

Thunderstrike, Lightning Field, and Shocking Grasp are the most painful to see, IMO. They're solid powers (well, Lightning Field has a lot of haters, but the other two are solid at least), but crippled by their slotting. The Force Feedback proc in Thunderstrike can be somewhat useful, but T-Strike is a big, slow powerhouse of an attack; with limited slots, you should probably be focused on improving its accuracy, damage, and endurance cost over it's knockback range, unless it's a theme build of some sort - I'd go with two Acc/Dam/End and a Dam/End/Rech. The same goes with the other two. Lightning Field is a prohibitively expensive toggle to leave up for extended combat with just the base slotting, so end red. is typically priority #1 even if you just use it for the looks, with some accuracy and damage if you spend lots of time in melee using it. Damage procs in damage auras, like that Scirocco piece, only add about one damage per second on average, anyway; you'd likely be better off with just a +damage SO. Shocking Grasp is both a great hold and a great attack, so it's just begging for more slots (I'd 7-slot it if I could). Basilisk's Gaze has some of the best set bonuses around, but ditch the proc and focus on the enhancement values. To find slots for these, I would take some out of Maneuvers. If you want to keep up the +Def values, you could throw 6x Lockdown or Mako's Bite in Shocking Grasp, and then use 2 or 3 Def and Def/End pieces in Maneuvers. Red Fortune's recharge and defense is nice, but not so nice when you have powers that would become vastly more useful with those slots.

A main thing to keep in mind is that procs (those Chance for _____ IOs) have the same strength in a very weak, fast attack as they do in a very slow attack, so if you want to play with procs, putting them in tier 1 attacks or AoEs is generally more efficient than in your biggest hitters. The Force Feedback proc is best placed in an AoE attack that will hit as many targets as possible (like Footstomp or Energy Torrent), because it will have roll a separate chance of activating and buffing you for every target that the attack hits. It doesn't stack, but it's much more likely to kick in that way, and it's helpful to have.

Thunderous Blast, you did absolutely right, so pat yourself on the back. Frankenslotting like that lets you do much more than SOs would allow, by being more efficient with the slots; in this case, maximizing your nuke as both an attack and a sapping tool.

Shocking Bolt is great, but it does half the base damage of Charged Bolts and under 1/3 of Lightning Bolt. If you mostly just use it as a hold, I'd advise using Lockdown over Thunderstrike here, or mix-and-matching with some HOs. If you cycle it as a third ranged attack for when closing to melee is too dangerous, since Electric Blast has no Tier 3 blast of it's own, then you're alright.

In Charged Armor, you could probably swap the pure endurance reduction slot for a res/end/rech piece if you want to keep the minor defense set bonus, or a res/end from another set if you don't care as much. You'll spend .02 or .03 more endurance per second for a few extra percent of resistance that way. More importantly though, that Gladiator's Armor +3% defense IO you put in is the single most expensive IO currently in the game, and will cost many times more influence than every other IO in the entire build put together, if you can even find one for sale. Use the Steadfast Protection res/def IO instead; it's effectively the same protection for a couple orders of magnitude less influence.

I'd like to help, but not enough to sort through that formatting nightmare. Try re-posting the build using the Universal Codes setting instead, so it's legible, and we'll help you out.

Not precisely the same situation, but my mid-30s mind/psi dominator has run with just Drain Psyche since level 20 (skipping the entire fitness pool). Although I do miss Hurdle, passing on Stamina has really only been noticeable when fighting Archvillains with significant defense (like Mako), or crowds of CoT spectrals (who will crush your tohit and make Drain Psyche exceedingly unreliable).

While the regeneration boost from Drain Psyche does substantially differ depending on the number of targets hit, the recovery boost does not. Hitting a single target with Drain Psyche on a blaster, without any slotting for +recovery in it, will provide +75% recovery; that is as much as three-slotted stamina plus the Numina and Miracle uniques would provide. A single +recovery SO, still assuming only one enemy is hit by Drain Psyche, will make it provide 100% recovery; this is about as much as slotted Stamina stacked with slotted Quick Recovery. Unless you are doing nothing but chaining AoE attacks without any endurance reduction in them, you will have to try extremely hard to floor your endurance while DP is active under the worst of circumstances, and typically end up with a nearly full bar after it fades.

With just three recharge SOs in Drain Psyche, you can cut its downtime to ~30 seconds, and if Hasten is active, ~15 seconds downtime - no fancy IOs required. Barring the presence of significant endurance drain from your opponents, you can normally get by just fine on base recovery for 15-30 seconds, and a blue inspiration can smooth over the rough patches.

Drain Psyche can be used for other tricks besides mere endurance sustainability; saturated Drain Psyche can let you recover immediately after using a crashing nuke, and slotted for +regen, it can get as strong as Instant Healing. Either way, it will cripple AV/GM regen, making hard targets much softer. However, assuming you invest the slots to make Drain Psyche work for you, skipping stamina is not unreasonable or an undue burden.

As everyone mentioned, Siren's Call is an amazing hunting ground for many hard-to-find defeat badge targets, home to hordes of Blue Ink Men, Ancestor Spirits, Sorcerors, Sky Skiffs, Warrior Elites, and assorted Arachnos bosses including Toxic Tarantulas.

A while ago I noticed another interesting source of Blue Ink Men though. When your hero goes to the tailor in Steel Canyon to unlock your second costume slot, you are given a Defeat X Tsoo mission and meet with a Tsoo ambush upon exiting the tailor. However, if you wait until around your hero is in their mid 30s, the ambush will match your level, and therefore produce Blue Ink Men instead of the common lower-level variants. If you had a full team of heroes who could all still pull the mission, you could get 8 8-man spawns of Tsoo with a pretty high concentration of Blue Ink Men in each. It's obviously a gimmicky way to do it, and pretty unlikely to happen unless you go out of your way to plan it, but it'd be effective for those who absolutely HATE going into a PvP zone.

(Seriously though, just suck it up and go to Sirens. There are a ton of PvP badges anyway, go for it.)

Not only are all the traditional "Travel Powers" greyed out, the challenge setting actually places a radically lower cap on your movement speed. Hurdle will probably exceed your jumpspeed cap while under the travel suppression Ouroboros challenge mode, even singleslotted. While the Kinetics powers should still function in general (IR = unsuppressed jumping ala CJ, SB = crazy +recharge/+recovery), their effect on your movement speed will be greatly stunted.

... No, there are no crossbow models that players can use, because they would require entirely different animations to work. That's the point. I'd like to see Talsorian Claws pull off a Dart Burst, etc.

1) What Lith said.
2) Mostly, just playing through the game and crafting/selling what drops on the market. I run TFs quite frequently, and the merits are always handy. When I want a larger cash infusion, simple market games (as are detailed extensively in the market forum and many guides) can make stupid amounts of money.

Also, buying rare salvage to sell with reward merits (from arcs/TFs) is, comparatively speaking, one of the worst merit/influence conversion rates available. At the price you could get a random rare salvage piece for, which usually would only sell for 1-2 million, you could get a random Pool C recipe roll. While random recipe rolls have a lot more variety in their return rates, if you make enough of them that your luck averages out, you will get a lot more bang for your buck. Alternatively, if you are drawn to the rare salvage selling for its reliability, you can save up those merits for something like a Luck of the Gambler +Recharge (200 merits), which can sell for over 100 million these days. Compare that merit/inf ratio to what you are getting with salvage conversion; it's almost 10x more profitable to save up for the big recipes. For a better merit/inf conversion rate than salvage but requiring less patience than saving up 200+ merits, consider valuable low-level things like a Steadfast res/def unique, or -KB IOs (although check the market price for these, since they vary pretty widely month to month).

If you want quick returns by selling rare salvage, tickets from AE content offer a vastly more favorable conversion rate than merits. In the mission architect, you're looking at 540 tickets per salvage piece (and you can choose the specific type that's selling for the most at the time) versus 4000+ tickets for a Pool C recipe, instead of basically the same price with merits.

Arch/EM/Fire blaster. 1000+ hours logged on him, and I still get a smile on my face when I watch him turn hordes of monsters into glorified pincushions.

Also: Fistful of Arrows when used on Giant Monsters. Seriously. You aren't shooting arrows, you're shooting ballista bolts.

RoA is a thing of beauty, pretty much regardless of what AT it's on or what powerset you pair it with. Fulcrum-shifted RoA can get scary.

However, while I adore and cherish my Arch/EM blaster, I've been reluctant to roll an Arch/Kin corruptor, for one reason. While Fulcrum Shift + RoA can let a corruptor do as much as or more damage than a blaster using BU + Aim + RoA, and do it more often thanks to Siphon Speed, the corruptor will have already engaged the enemy to fire Fulcrum Shift. They will then have to activate RoA while the baddies are aggroed; if they are sufficiently nasty or high-level baddies they can ruin your day while you're standing in the middle of them firing, and if you bounce back to get some breathing room it can get tricky to get them all to stay clumped up in one spot for the volley to hit. Kin/Arch Defenders can use Mass Hypnosis from the //Psi epic to pop an aggro-free Fulcrum Shift before engaging, but Corruptors do not get such a luxury (that I can think of tonight, at least). Of course, you can use Fulcrum Shift on one weaker group, finish them, and then RoA a second group as an opener (refreshing the buffs on the occasional stragglers) but that approach requires more maintenance and timing.

Any Arch/Kin will have jawdropping power at their fingertips, but approaching RoA from a blaster background, the key feature of it is that while the animation time is rather long, and enemies running around while you fire it carelessly can lead to missing most/all of the intended targets, using it as an opening move makes the animation irrelevant. RoA will not aggro until the arrows start falling, and you can pack an enormous amount of burst damage into that first second that they are aware of your presence, with RoA/Fistful landing almost simultaneously. Backed by BU/Aim (and possibly some red insps or other teammates' buffs), you can frequently remove all the minions from an enemy group before they get a single attack in, with the LTs following swiftly on their heels (or dying instantly as well, depending on the difficulty settings). If you have to aggro the targets beforehand to get your crazy damage buffs, you trade that damage for a lot of the tactical utility RoA brings to the table.

If I absolutely HAD to make the choice between the two I'd take Lunge over Slash. However, in your build, I'd ditch (or heavily postpone) CT: Offensive, and slide the rest of your picks up to get both Lunge and Slash in there asap. CT:O is like an extra yellow DO of accuracy in your attacks; it's alright as a lowbie but once you get reasonable slotting in your attacks, it's unimportant. Smoke Grenade is also a nice addition when you're leveling and haven't fully developed your defenses. Admittedly, I haven't used it all that much; my Widow spends most of her time as a Fortunata instead.

Mind Link can be made perma without too much investment as a Widow, since it has a lower base recharge than the Fortunata version and Mental Training is a quick 20% recharge boost. If you get it perma, then you won't need much extra defense, although because VEATs get very little defense debuff resistance, it's good to get a bit of padding over 45% if at all possible.

Claws are stupidly awesome. Spin does Footstomp-style damage on a shorter cooldown (in an admittedly smaller radius) and you get it practically before you leave Mercy Island; if you still aren't happy with Spin, you ALSO get Eviscerate and Shockwave later on. Focus is one of the best attacks around, and it also happens to be ranged and have guaranteed knockdown. Followup gives you enough extra damage and tohit to slice and dice whatever, whenever. Seriously, Claws will spoil you.

/Psi = permanent regen shutdown = dead AV pretty much regardless what your DPS is, provided you can survive their onslaught long enough.

A high recharge /Earth build has very impressive melee DPS, Power Boost, and Seismic Smash, which is both a crazy-good attack AND a hold. The presence of Seismic Smash and Power Boost means that an /Earth dom (ideally, one with a very quick-animating hold in their primary like Fire or Mind) can potentially permahold AVs even through the PToD, barring an unlucky string of misses on your holds. If you can survive the first minute or so to establish the holds (hint: pop a couple lucks) then you should be able to survive the rest of the fight. Either route should be workable, but the builds will differ greatly.

I would say that Hoarfrost is likely a waste of your time as a blaster, given the alternatives. The main two offences are that it has an even longer recharge than a typical Dull Pain clone (as might be expected by it being in an epic pool) and that blasters have a very low HP cap. That last bit is misleading though: Blasters have the same max HP as most squishy ATs, but long ago their base HP was increased above the other squishies. As a result, they are closer to the HP than most other ATs. A blaster with the +HP accolades and no set bonuses will only get +13% HP from Hoarfrost, and it's quite reasonable to reach the HP cap with sets (or come close enough to be irrelevant).

As a result of this, Hoarfrost for blasters is mostly reduced to a large heal on a gratuitously long recharge. If you are taking it for the heal, I would argue that either Aid Self (somewhat smaller heal value but about 30x faster to recharge) or packing a few extra green insps would suit your purposes as well or better. The //Cold epic has some nice stuff, like Frozen Armor and Hibernate, but Hoarfrost is almost as lackluster an addition to it as Melt Armor was to //Fire.

Slotting Liquefy: Bare bones, 3x recharge, 3x -tohit. Max efficiency: 3x Membranes (Recharge/Tohit/Defense HOs). If you have so many slots in your build that you don't know what to do with them, you could add in procs, +range, or maybe an acc/hold HO or two. I tend to avoid proccing out powers with a recharge time as long as Liquefy, but it could work.

For what it's worth, Double XP didn't actually end until they brought the servers down for maintenance at 4:00 AM Pacific time. The same has held true for every other double XP weekend they've run.

Beyond this, not sure what's up.

Useful function of Presence pool fear powers: Dominators. Doms can pop Domination to turn Invoke Panic into a mag-4 AoE fear power, or (for mind controllers) just stack it and/or Intimidate normally with Terrify. Alternatively, they could stagger Invoke Panic and Terrify to perma-fear a couple groups. Fear and Taunt powers have some very nice, very inexpensive set bonuses available to them, which would be especially useful to a perma-dom on a budget.

This strategy seems more viable with Elec/Elec than Fire/Elec simply because of the all-important Short Circuit. An /Elec heavy attack chain with crazy recharge on Power Sink could certainly shred a target's endurance bar, and after playing in some all-electric supergroups I've seen a great many archvillains stand around stupidly with zero endurance while we pummeled them. However, the -recovery chance in most of the melee attacks is pretty unreliable, and REALLY big stuff probably would take too long to wear down with just -end.

For pretty much any end-draining build though, having even a single partner who also packs end drains can make a huge difference. While it is often faster to kill than to disarm when solo, when you have double the draining you start to look at serious mitigation potential.

I took a Sonic/Sonic defender to 50 back in Issue 7 with nothing more than Hurdle and Combat Jumping. This was before Ouroboros, veteran base teleporters, or any form of temp. travel packs. Issue 8 (and the Safeguard jetpacks) hit live when Thomas was in his 40s, which made the rest of his career cushier, but they were unnecessary. In issue 13, I took my Bane to 50 with no travel power but Hurdle, supplemented by temp. travel packs and Ouroboros, and to this day has not respecced into one. The lack of a "proper" travel power never even annoyed me, really (including getting around Grandville while soloing every single contact in it); some of the arcs that involved running from one side of Nerva to the other over and over got old, but those are a nuisance even at the movespeed cap.

Today, in the wonderful world of Ouroboros, purchaseable Raptor Packs, Ninja Run, Wentworth teleporters, and supergroup base teleporters, proper travel powers are pretty optional. I typically fit one in somewhere in the upper 20s if I have a loose build, but at least 1/3 of my characters plan to take one at 49 or not at all.