Dr Harmony

I think that the Fire and Ice melee/manipulation sets that use swords for some attacks are absolutely crying out for alternate animations, so that the sets can be all-sword or no-sword as the user wishes.

My first character was a Fire/Fire Blaster and I remember my jaw dropping with horror when I realised she's have to use swords for some attacks, in a superhero game.

Later on I made an angelic character with a flaming sword, who didn't really suit setting her hands on fire and using them as weapons.

Yes, it really bugs me too.

The really expensive stuff I'm aware of:

Kinetic Combat. 100+ million for the best ones.
You don't need this, go for ranged defence instead with the much cheaper Thunderstrike.

But do buy these with Hero merits/merits that you pick up along the way with your Controllers. The hero tips missions are generally fun, well written pieces which breathe life into characters like Shock Treatment, Flambeaux and so on. Its wont feel like farming or grinding, and its very easy to get a casual team to do these.

Luck of the Gambler +Rech. You will want these for Hover/Combat Jump/Weave or wherever you can stick one, and theyre 100 mill+. Buy them with Hero Merits maybe? Building up recharge is a long terms goal, and you dont need these ever, but they're nice to have.

Miracle +Recovery. You dont need this. Its OK later I guess.

Basilisk's Gaze (10-40 million a piece?) Four of these in a hold give 7.5% Recharge. Very nice, put in some lowball bids and wait.

Thunderstrike - cheap, a few million a piece. the best set for ranged attacks, a bit of Recovery and Ranged Defence. Nice for single target immobilise.

Doctored wounds - cheap. +5% recharge for 5 pieces, good for your healing powers

Positron's Blast - cheapish (10 mill for rarest piece?) The only decent set for Fireball.

I surpirsed myself yesterday - musing over some character concepts I decided on an Electric Armor/Martial Arts tanker as something a bit different.

She's now written herself in my head over the past 24 hours and I cant wait ot get started. I love it when that happens

The only self-shield available to Blasters that Power Boost will work on is the Day Job accolade Combat Shield. Spend 3 weeks logging out in a PVP zone, followed by 3 weeks (and thereafter) logging out in Arenas and you can get 30 minutes use per week.

Its a nice little back-pocket god-mode against Smashing, Lethal and Energy.

I agree that these rules are very arbitrary and dumb.

If you have something confrontational in your search comment or bio, eg 'No I don't want to team with "experts" ', that might act as bait for tells from some people, even if its just to ask you what you mean.

Maybe change it to something simple like "No Teaming" to minimise tells.

Acrobatics will give you some slight Hold protection, enough for about 1 hold attack. So it wont help against enemies who spam status attacks, like Madness Mages or Rikti telepaths, and it's useless against sleep or stun.

I'd go for:

- Stealth IO so that they don't get the drop on you as often. If you can't afford one, run hero tips to get one.
- Carry break frees, always stock up at the zone's hospital in between missions.
- Make a bind to combine insps into break frees.
- Ranged Defence via IOs.

I love the 30s.
Its when I start completing IO sets. I often find the power levels a bit disappointing - picking up say Combat Jumping or Weave at level 35 is often a bit of a non-event. It does of course depend on the power sets.

But even a new cool power is rarely that great until the following slot level when I can 4-slot it.

If I was running on SOs until level 50, I imagine I would find the 30s quite dull.

If you take full advantage of your Primary and Secondary set rather than deliberately picking bad powers, I'd suggest an Ice/Sonic Controller as the most team-oriented pairing. Sonic resonance is a boon to any team but the worse support set solo.

Its quite acceptabel to slot Block of Ice for control, and thus have that and damage-slotted Chillblain as your only attacks. Your secondary gives you some small resitance and status protection, no endurance benefits as you chip away with your two attacks at the enemy, and Sonic Siphon to slightly speed things up.

(Of course, once you get a pet you can use Disruption Field on him. Mind/Sonic would be less solo-friendly in that way, but Mind provides quite a decent soloist attack chain.)

I like it where it is now.
Champions Online demanded a higher reaction time due to the blocking mechanism, and while that was nice for a change, I prefer the way City of Heroes plays.

There is lag compared to single player console games.
I've observed some rather odd adaptation to lag in myself from playing the game a lot. I know how the AI behave roughly, and I'm planning out moves in my head like a decision tree as I play. eg "I'll jump there, fire this attack on him, then that attack on the second minion, but if I miss the first I'll do this instead..." I think that it feels more realtime for me than it actually is because of this predictablity, and the 5% chance to miss no matter what keeps it interesting enough because it forces me to make backup plans as I fight.

There are a couple of cases where the AIs move too fast.

1) Sappers. They seem to be able to fire their guns round corners with zero pause or animation time as soon as you're in field of view. Most enemies dont do this.

2) Master Illusionists. They summon their illusions at the drop of a hat, and nothing short of a Domination hold seems to stop them. On my Gravity Controller I could Lift, Hold and Hold again before they hit the floor on any other enemy but these - they seemed to have the ability to summon duplicates in mid air.

(I know I've picked two favourite bugbear enemies here, but the speed is part of the problem. Im pretty sure this isn't just my skewed perceptions)

Thanks for the info, Lemur Lad.
It sounds like there are a few things in the works that I wasn't aware of.

And what I was trying to say was that if you're chasing Alignment Merits, efficiency once again dictates that you play at -1 (or +0 to get Purples too). Doing 10 Hero Tip missions at -1 gives you ten stars the same as doing ten Hero Tip missions at +4.
I've found myself on quite a few tip mission teams who are speeding through low difficulty content for the merits.

Having recently hit 50 after returning to the game I noticed something odd.

Prior to 50, you tend to fight enemies that increase in relative level because of the extra experience. I'd upped to running missions at +2 by the mid-20s, and +3 around the late 30s once I knew I could handle it.
Teams tend to follow this pattern, if you're invited to a mission team in the 20s onwards, chances are they're running at +2.

However, once you hit 50, there's no longer much incentive to play at anything but +0.

Incarnate Shards and Purple recipes are calculated per-defeat irrespective of enemy level (I think).
Hero tips drop per mission, so playing at low level is encouraged.
Task Force I've run with tend to play at +0 in case the AV is too much of a speedbump, and the Merit reward is the same regardles of level.
The extra influence is OK, but dwarfed by the potential earnings from recipe drops.

So the net effect is that when you gain this top-tier level of power you start facing much weaker enemies.

What would the consequences be if post-50 rewards were scaled to level? Would Task Force merits increasing with level lead to more Task Forces crashing and burning as people over-reached their abilities?
Shard/Recipe drops being more frequent for higher level enemies would help single-target focussed characters - currently the post 50 game seems to very much favour area damage.

Could this work?

Thats a very good idea. I'd be happy if NPCs stoped addressing my Animated Stone.

I'm over here! *waves*

In case HDR2nd doesn't know - no matter how much accuracy you have your chance to hit an enemy caps at 95%, so you always have a slight chance to miss.

Since most players slot enough accuracy to hit this cap, the extra accuracy you're suggesting would have literally no effect.

Controller attacks like the single target hold and immobilise typically have a built in 20% accuracy bonus, so with 3 SO's you should have an accuracy of 1.2 * 2 = 2.4 Multiply this by your base chance to hit of 75% and you have a chance to hit of 180%, well over the cap.
Even with Dual Origin enhancements in your teens you'd be hitting the cap.
No enhancements at all would give you a 90% chance to hit.

It sounds like you're missing more often though. What level are you and who were you fighting? Some enemies have -To Hit debuffs, like Circle of Thorns ghosts, which can stack up very quickly.
Some of the Banished Pantheon masks combine dark attacks that do -To hit with defence, which makes them very hard to hit. Fortunately they're rare, and we have yellow inspirations.

I'd asked this in the Blaster forums a while back, and have now had the chance to test it myself.

Power boost DOES affect the defence bonus from the Day Job Combat Shield. (But not the Kinetic Dampener temp power, because that grants energy resistance.)

For a Blaster, the Shield give +14% Defrence against Smashing/Lethal and Energy. For the duration of Power Boost it's around +24%

For a Dominator, you'd jump from +17% to +34% or so.

Its not a game breaker by any means. To get this power, you need to spend 21 days logged off in a PVP zone, and 21 days logged off in an arena, and can then earn up to 30 minutes per week usage by logging off in arenas all the time. Believe me, this is a pain.

And the boosted defence lasts only 15 seconds at a time.

But, I imagine it will be a very handy tool for both Blasters and Dominators when faced with multiple spawns solo that cant be locked down immediately, or for soloing certain EBs.

Thats a very cool idea. I can answer tow of your questions.

Fulcrum Shift does apply its damage debuff before you alert the enemy, if you open with it.

Corrupters do indeed get Scorpion Shield. Consider also grabbing the day job Combat Shield or crafting Kinetic Dampeners to boost it when you really need to.

I can see two potential problems:

1) You may run out of slots to get all the bonuses you predict. If you gain one of those 7.5%'s at the expense of a 6.25% somewhere else you havent gained much.

2) The animations for Dual Pistols are on the long side, and this may become painfully apparent as your recharge goes up. I certainly find that on my namesake Earth dominator, and love powers like Salt Crystals and Power push for the quick response they provide.

I wish you luck with this idea, and would love to hear how it goes.

Thunderstrike is good and cheap for your best single target attacks, and gives good set bonsues. Do this first.

Put that in Aimed Shot and Blazing Arrow.

Recharge is great for Trick Arrow in general, so find some cheaper sets that give that bonus.

Decimation (5 piece including Build Up proc) in Snap Shot is good. The bonuses are worse than Thunderstrike, and the proc happens every time you fire, so put it here in your weakest fastest-firing attack.

Try to get 4 of the following also to max out your five +6.25% recharge bonuses.

Positron's Blast (5 pieces) in Fistful and/or Explosive Arrow
Cloud Sense (4 pieces) in Flash Arrow
Call of the Sandman (5) in Poision Gas Arrow
Stupefy (5 pieces) in Stunning Shot

These should all fit into your budget.

More expensive, may require you to save up more money...
Basilisks Gaze (4 pieces) in Ice Arrow and EM Pulse

Very expensive but worth it...
Luck of the Gambler +7.5% global recharge. Buy these with Hero merits (2 each = 4 days of doing Tip missions) for any power that will take it, eg Hover or Combat Jumping, Weave, Manouvers

Radiation Blast, definitely.
I've used it twice now for light manipulation and it works very well.

I quite enjoyed Sonic/Energy.

Sonic Provides little in the way of personal protection, so the knockback from Energy Blast was very helpful when you aggrod something you didn't intend to. Its also handy for sweeping enemies back into Liquefy.

Its a very team-centric build though. Sonic will complement Time very well, I imagine, since it provides boosts that time does not, like Resistance and status protection.

Sonic/Mental works rather well together due to all the cones. Shockwave every 8 seconds, Howl every 10 and Psychic Scream every 12 seconds at base values means you can work on a very powerful cone attack chain. Shockwave is worth taking in my opinion, its consistent knockback (rather than 50% chance) so you can learn to not scatter groups, and decent damage, if not stellar.

You will serve your teammates best by concentrating on damage. Have you ever ben on a team that lacks good area damage? It can be quite painful to lay down area controls, for example, and not be able to defeat the stunned enemy quickly enough before they wake up.
Tanks and scrappers need greater surviviability of the enemy die slowly.
So in leveraging all that area damage you are definitely supporting your team. The -recharge in Psychic Scream should be a non-issue because the enemy die too quickly to get off asecond round anyway.

Your debuffs will probabl;y come third to damage and then control - with Sirens Song and Screech you have some good control ability available to help protect your team.

Defence will be more effective against normal enemies, but is very easily neutralised.

Devouring Earth are the worse, because each Quartz emanator dropped by a Guardian gives them a +100% To Hit.

Arachnos Tarantula Mistresses (and Queens) do a psychic area attack that carries a big defence debuff, and cuts through S/L/E defence by virtue of being psychic, of course.

Than again, in both these cases, Blaster epic Resistance shields won't do much good either against the incoming Toxic or Psi damage.

I'm going for defence on my blaster.

We're about one hour into the 2 hour window, I believe. And I didn't see any announcement anywhere about this.