Doctor_Kumquat

If you like teaming, Howl all the way and never look back. If you solo far more often, then Shout, but the AoE -res is priceless on teams, and it will be your best attack when you have backup hitters. Shockwave is more of a control power than an attack, in that it's a light-damage AoE with sub-par accuracy and no debuff other than the knockback. Howl should almost always take precedence over Shockwave, if you take Shockwave at all.

Once you hit 18 you can open any battle with Siren's Song, and then fight everyone in the group one at a time with single-target attacks while the rest snore away. This is an incredibly safe soloing method, and while it's likely a bit faster on a Sonic blaster who has heavy-hitting melee attacks than a corruptor, having a solid ST attack chain is important. Later on in the game if/when you get to twinking out your corruptor, at very high recharge levels Shout can actually be detrimental to your attack chain because of how long the animation is, and you can get by fine without it; on DOs/SOs, you don't have enough recharge to have other options, and it does hit pretty hard.

While I've never had a chance to test this personally, I believe it SHOULD function like the Theft of Essence proc, and if so, would give you a chance to gain endurance for every target hit by Dark Regen. A Theft of Essence proc in it can turn it from a prohibitively expensive heal to a net endurance gain with enough targets and some luck; with both procs, the results could be delicious. Whether or not you can reasonably afford to slot an extra proc in Dark Regen instead of an actual enhancement for some variation of recharge/accuracy/end redux/healing is up to you.

As Tonality mentioned, picking up Followup and Focus (and dropping Swipe to compensate) would make a significant improvement to your attack chain. Followup is a decent but not outstanding attack on its own, but provides a modest boost to damage and tohit for 10 seconds. The damage boost is nice but not dramatic on a Brute with so much damage boost from fury; the tohit can be a significant aid, since it is easily made permanent, and possibly doublestacked. Focus is both the strongest single-target attack in Claws and a source of guaranteed knockdown, letting you juggle the more dangerous enemies and significantly increasing survivability. Those Longbow Wardens aren't so dangerous when they're spending the better part of the fight picking themselves up off the floor.

On the overall survivability front, yes, Tough and Energize will help. Shockwave can be either amazing or annoying depending on the terrain and playstyle, but unless you are adamantly opposed to knockback, it's usually a good thing. Power Sink will help a bunch, both to provide endless endurance and to deprive your enemies of it, limiting them to their weaker attacks.

Fire or sonic primary; which is more effective will likely depend on your intended team size. For secondary, if running solo/small team then /Mental wins by a mile simply because of Drain Psyche, which can floor an AV's regeneration rate. On large teams there is often a defender/controller who can provide an equivalent -regen debuff (like Lingering Radiation), and once they're at 0 regen extra -regen sources don't really matter. Still, Drain Psyche lets /MM blasters solo things no other blaster would be able to, and do it a lot faster.

Rolling a Fire/, Sonic/, or /MM blaster isn't required for big game hunting; my Arch/EM blaster has soloed AVs too. However, those blasters will have a much easier time of it in general.

... Wow. Impressive necropost, Ryu.

And yea, TMS has a knack for this stuff.

[The following rant consists of slotting advice / philosophy from the perspective of a newish dominator playing through the early/mid game "normally" - that is, leveling up solo or on equal-level teams through the traditional lowbie contacts / papers. If you plan on rushing through to the mid/end game, disregard most of this post.]

On my mind/psi dom, I put far more emphasis on my primary than my secondary as a lowbie, both in power picks and in slots, relying on an attack chain of Levitate, Dominate, Mezmerize, Mind Probe, and Confuse until I got access to goodies like Subdue. The ST Mind controls worked fine as straight attacks, if a little heavier on the endurance than conventional blasts would have been. However, he was born before the great dom revamp of Issue 15; now that the low level /psi blasts don't suck, using mesmerize and dominate as the core of your damaging attack chain is no longer desirable (levitate still works though).

Were I to reroll him now that they completely redid /Psi, I would take and slot Mind Probe, TK Thrust, and Mental Blast early on, in addition to Mezmerize, Dominate, and possibly Levitate. They will be your heavy lifters for damage and control for most of the game, so give them some love early. I know you said you were going to skip TK Thrust, but they did make it almost as powerful a melee attack as Mind Probe, which is your heaviest hitter in the set, and it's half Smashing damage. Not taking TK Thrust or Levitate is going to be brutal when you come up against robots.

Mass Hypnosis is the only AoE control you'll get until your 20s, so I'd take it early and possibly respec it out later if you aren't getting much out of it. Confuse is always a good tool to have, but it can probably be pushed back a few levels. If you level up through the conventional lowbie arcs rather than SKing up with a friend or doing some AE arcs, Mooks are irritatingly resistant to confusion, for what it's worth.

As far as slotting goes in general, Mezmerize and Confuse work very well with minimal slotting; they both get luxuriously long base durations, and inherent bonus accuracy. If you have spare slots they both can take really good, really cheap IO sets, but slotting them can be postponed until later on in your career. Feel free to load up on pool powers in the late teens / early 20s, since you will want to divert your slotting to your main controls/attacks for a while, and low slot requirement pools like travels and medicine are perfect for this. You seemed fixed on 6-slotting everything; I generally shoot for 4 or 5 slotting everything first, and then adding on a 6th later on in the game if I have extras to pass around or I'm hungry for a six-slot set bonus. 5 slots, esp. if you're willing to at least frankenslot some set pieces, is normally enough to work with, and of particular interest to dominators, tends to be where +recharge set bonuses are placed.

Some other powers, like Telekinesis (if you choose to use it; it's totally an individual preference) need very little slotting at all; Telekinesis just needs 2-3 endurance reducers to be happy. You can likely skip Total Domination altogether; AoE holds sound amazing in theory, but it's 4 minute base recharge paired with low accuracy and low duration outside of Domination mean that it needs to be sixslotted to be halfway decent, and Terrify tends to get the job done on 1/4 the cooldown and 2x the duration.



Since your crunch seems to be a slot shortage, not a power shortage, this may not be as useful, but my dominator has gotten by just fine WITHOUT the fitness pool. Drain Psyche is wonderful, and with just a couple of slots in it, popping DP or Domination as needed can keep your endurance bar sitting pretty most of the time. The only part of Fitness I missed was Hurdle, for combat mobility. Tag on Power Sink, as you said you intend to, and endurance should be a total non-issue.

Hasten is tremendously helpful for this and any other Dominator activities in general; everything a Dominator does, they do better with +recharge, and even without Permadom levels, it helps. Even though very few of my other characters bother with it, I would never make a dominator without Hasten, to get Domination and all the AoE controls up faster along with smoothing out my attack chains.

For the end-game, as you don't need to sink many slots in pool powers, it's possible to build a mind/psi with 5 or 6 slots in all your main attacks and controls.. I'd just think carefully about whether or not you actually need all of them in each power.

I view Power Surge as somewhere between unneeded and downright detrimental for scrappers and tanks, but on a Brute, it works. Here's why: tanks get sufficiently higher resistance modifiers that running their regular toggles (and fighting pool) can get them to over 80% resistances in the important fields (cap = 90%), and scrappers have lower caps (75%), which their level of resistances will approach well enough. Brutes get the tanker caps but the scrapper mods, so jumping from baseline to resistance cap for a brute is a pretty massive survivability jump. You shouldn't need Power Surge on a constant basis, and inspirations can smooth over the need or replace Power Surge entirely, but having Power Surge ready to go when you/your team get into a hairy situation is a good thing. In Power Surge, you're at the 90% resistance cap to everything except psionics and toxic damage, and even those are solid; if your insp tray was running low, your teammates were struggling, and you were facing down a couple extra Longbow ambushes or an AV that favored Neg. Energy blasts, you'd likely be in a world of hurt outside of Power Surge.

My AR/Ice blaster was created with the sole intention of abusing the hell out of Ignite + Ice Patch. His sole purpose was to throw as much napalm as humanly possible. Even though the AR tweak messed with a large portion of that AV-melting joy, AR is noticeably stronger overall after the patch, so I accept it. Ignite is still as damaging as it ever was, it just isn't mindblowingly spammable once they get immobilized.

//Ice mastery is the only epic pool that offers any sort of a defense toggle, and Frozen Armor is just smashing/lethal defense. Munitions has a weak passive resistance power and the rest have strong resistance toggles. Our positional defenses must come from pool powers like Maneuvers/Combat Jumping, our allies, our insp tray, and/or our IO set bonuses. You can still softcap at least one defense type without compromising your overall effectiveness though, and possibly more depending on the exact build. One of my friends boasted a frighteningly strong Psi/Dev/Munitions blaster with softcapped ranged and AoE defense, along with enough +tohit and +accuracy to hit just about anything imaginable, but had almost zero recharge or damage boosts as a result.

Another popular strategy is to get your ranged and AoE defense to the mid-30s so eating a single luck will push you over the edge; backing off of the ranged defense lets you invest more slotting to AoE defense (or recharge or whatever) and offers more versatile protection. You don't always need that level of survivability, but you can have it when you do (as long as you restock your insp tray between missions).

Not supposed to talk about what, Ishaila? Pistols are in open beta, and anyone with an account can go on Test and toy around with their PEW PEW shinies.

IMO, Dark and Kin do seem to be the ideal way to go with it, but as a blaster, there are a lot of ways to take it. One of the unique things about Pistols is that the mez shot changes from a stun to a hold depending on your ammo type, so whatever style your secondary has, you can still stack it. Hail of Bullets looks amazing but when the flashiness is over, the damage will probably leave you unimpressed when not paired with Build Up. /Dev has its toys to redeem itself; mines can fix the burst damage dilemma and 'trops and stealth help, but not so much Death Blossom goodness.

The standard, run in guns blazing and kill everything NAO approach to blasters would likely mesh the best with /MM (extra AoEs to clear the crowds, Drain Psyche for support) /EM (Boost Range for the shortish cone and tier 3, lots of stunning and Smash/Energy damage for robots and hard targets). I could see a viable build put together with any secondary though depending on personal priorities.

I will say this though... Even though the majority of my high-level characters use weapon sets and are forced to redraw on a regular basis, and I have no problems with it in general (my Bane swaps from a gun to a mace to no weapon at all every other attack in large brawls), I'm finding myself very reluctant to put my pistols away in the middle of a fight to hit people with something else. The flow and grace to the attacks is just fun to watch, and I will probably stick to a secondary-light build on all my pistoliers except for the /Kin corruptor.

The Paragon Wiki link explains the complete revamp to Defiance pretty well. Instead of occasional streaks of jawdroppingly MASSIVE damage, you get modestly increased average damage in extended fights, and less fear of mezzes. Unless you have frighteningly large recharge boosts in your build, taking both your tier 1 and 2 blast is generally advised.

Sardan points out some less publicized but no less dramatic boosts. Mezzes will now suppress most toggles rather than disable them, so although they (usually) provide no benefits while the mez is in effect, you bounce back to full potency when it fades without having to retoggle. The exceptions are offensive or foe-anchored toggles, such as Snowstorm or Radiation Infection. Insp combination, while mostly praised for making it easier to get wakies in a pinch, lets you make use of otherwise useless drops, and as a blaster, careful insp usage is a big deal.

If you enjoy Devices, go with that. It's very much a personal preference, and a pretty major departure from all the other secondaries. That said, the difference between firing the traditional opening volley of Aim + RoA + Fistful + Explosive with and without BU is noticeable. I've been messing around with /Dev a bit lately and Tripmines are quite the handy toys, but Nova Knight put it quite aptly: Devices has a well-stocked toolbox whereas /Energy is more like a hammer, but /Energy has a really really effective hammer that removes the need for fancier tools 95% of the time.

Another note that may be more helpful: While Stamina is typically seen as the reason someone takes the Fitness power pool, and is incredibly helpful for most characters, the other Fitness powers aren't useless. Even on my characters that don't take Stamina because they have near-limitless endurance through other means (like my Dark Melee / Fiery Aura brute who can completely refill his endurance bar with a click power every ~30 seconds), I find myself wishing I had Hurdle. Hurdle is basically Ninja Run before Ninja Run existed. While Hurdle may not be as fast as Super Jump, slotted Hurdle alone can let you bunny-hop around town about as fast as a Flier, and gives you the extra height needed to get over most obstacles. Stacked with Ninja Run, it can let you bounce around scary-fast. Health isn't very dramatic, but it's a nice passive regen boost that stacks with any other defenses you have, and can be used (if you have either tons of influence or some choice merit purchases) to slot some nice unique IOs.

As a /WP scrapper you have access to Quick Recovery at L20, which gives a stronger boost than Stamina (base 30% vs. 25%). If you put any endurance reduction slots in your attacks at all, one or the other should generally be fine. However, they do stack, and if you want the freedom of being able to completely forget you even HAVE an endurance bar, you could take stamina later when you don't have any must-get powers on the horizon for a massive recovery boost.

On the contrary, /SD has a taunt aura and only Brute /SR has one (they modified Evasion when they ported it over), not Scrapper /SR. Against All Odds may not be the tauntiest taunt aura, but it's better passive aggro management than /SR will provide.

As to why /SD vs. /SR: if you're paired with a cold defender, the ice shields stacked on top of your normal defenses should softcap either scrapper. Other than defense, the only thing /SR provides is Quickness and superior defense debuff protection. /SD would provide significant damage buffing through Against All Odds, weak but non-zero resistances, +max hp, and Shield Charge, one of the best AoE attacks around. If you can get fully saturated Against All Odds and Soul Drain, DM/SD scrappers can self-boost their damage by over 200%, resulting in some of the highest DPS numbers of any AT.

Just FYI, Sprint has a somewhat stronger runspeed increase than Swift (50% vs. 35%). Swift has the obvious advantage of being an endurance-free passive, rather than a somewhat costly toggle to use during battle, but if you are using it for getting around town it might like the extra slots before Swift gets them.

It may be a band name, but it's also an arcade game that's sucked many a quarter out of my pockets. Sorry to hear about the hospitalizing electrocution from it though; didn't realize the tower was THAT powerful.

Not sure I have many stories like that behind character generation though.

About 90% of the time, doing lethal damage doesn't really matter. For the other 10% of the situtations, which are mostly robots and some tanker types, you can really leverage Ignite and Flamethrower, but even more important are the attacks from your secondary. If you have something like Bonesmasher to fall back on, your AoEs will wipe out all the non-resistant foes in short order and you can walk right up and punch out the survivors.

Generally speaking, +regen only becomes useful as a survival tool (rather than just a downtime reducer) when you have other meaningful mitigation to layer it with. This can be in the form of mezzes, defense, or resistance, but a fire/fire blaster without other buffs active generally won't get a whole lot out of their regen if they faceplant within 15 seconds. +HP, which quite frequently accompanies +regen in IO sets, is very useful though; getting up towards the HP cap (~133% for blasters) is often enough to let you survive nasty alpha strikes and provide a healthy buffer for extra reaction time in case things go sour.

Resistance lowers all incoming damage (of the appropriate damage type) by some percentage, making it very reliable. If you have the resists of an Invulnerability or Electric tanker, for instance, you can tell exactly how much damage you're taking over time and take appropriate measures to deal with it before it becomes a real problem, rather than just getting an unlucky streak and getting twoshotted before you can react. As a blaster though, the only meaningful resists will come from your epic pool's toggle, and possibly Force of Nature / Powersurge. Still good to have, for sure.

Defense is, in my opinion, the nicest thing to build for on a blaster, because defense avoids not only damage but also mezzes and debuffs that would otherwise ruin your day. If you want to go for smashing and lethal defense, you can take Frozen Armor from the //Ice epic, and possibly use the Gladiator dayjob defense toggle as well, as a foundation to build on with IOs; this covers almost all melee attacks, along with a lot of ranged and AoE attacks (especially versus mundane enemy groups). Note that S/L defense is most prevalent in Melee IO sets, so all-ranged blasters may find this undesirable. I built my archer for Ranged defense, which has allowed him to do crazy things like solo Archvillains without insps/temps.

Whether heavy defense is worth designing for at the expense of all your potential +recharge and +damage is a matter of personal preference, but I believe you can get enough defense to make a noticeable improvement in your quality of life without making any serious sacrifices in your offensive output.

The real perk of Hamidon enhancements are that they let you conserve slots to use elsewhere in your build; if you either have a power that doesn't offer interesting set bonuses and you don't want to sink many slots into, or a power that you want to load up with a dozen slots but can't (like Siphon Life), they offer the best enhancement value per slot in the game. My Sonic/Sonic/Psi defender, for example, has three Membranes (tohit/defense/recharge) in Liquefy to max out both the recharge and debuffing, and Dominate has 2 generic recharge IOs along with 2 Dam/Hold, an Acc/Dam, and an Acc/Hold HO to let it serve both as a powerful psionic attack and a really long-lasting hold. They're hardly necessary to make a good build, but they can let you cut corners easier by offering the enhancement values of Purple IOs at a fraction of the price. If you don't want to figure out how an actual Hamidon Raid works, or your server doesn't raid much, you can get Synthetic HOs (identical except in name) from running a RSF / STF, or buying them off the market for a few million.

On the main topic, yes, DM/Elec brutes are crazy awesome, and arguably the most effective build in the game at crushing Rikti.

Drain Psyche, with one target in range and not slotted for end mod, still provides a recovery boost 50% stronger than slotted stamina. Generally speaking, unless you plan on running a ton of toggles and/or not slotting anything for endurance reduction, it works fine as a recovery mechanism if you ignore end mod. If you slot for healing, however, Drain Psyche is like a 30 second version of Instant Healing whenever you tag a decently sized group, and this is the approach I would suggest. End mod sets are still useful in that they can offer acc/rech pieces which DP desperately craves, but not for the actual end mod value - I would advise frankenslotting it with pieces from Accurate Healing, Healing, and End Mod sets to max out its healing and recharge values with fairly high accuracy; any end mod boost you get would be a side effect.

The one reason I could suggest maxing it out for end mod would be that a target-saturated Drain Psyche could potentially out-weigh the endurance crash from Thunderous Blast and let you recover endurance immediately after nuking. This does not strike me as a particularly reliable tactic, but if you're a nuking addict it's worth considering.

IMO, the largest boon -def grants Rad Blast is the ability to load it up with a TON of procs that most blast sets wouldn't be able to. You can throw in an Achilles Heel, Lady Grey, and/or Shield Breaker (if you can find those) into any/all of your attacks you choose to.

Additionally, it helps a bunch against Rikti Drones on teams where your AoEs ignore their defense anyway and then allow your teammates to hit them, or Paragon Protectors that hit MoG or Elude, since you can stack up enough -def before they hit godmode that you can keep hitting them after. This applies to lots of other enemies that gain more defense as the fight progresses, like Romans. When they clump up around the tank in very large numbers, their Phalanx Fighting can make them tediously hard to hit, but hitting the crowd with Neutron Bomb or Irradiate before they can pack in as tightly prevents that.