DrMike2000

Good on you, Umbral.

Numerical modelling like this is a really important tool for game designers, and one that's unfortunately a bit lacking sometimes. Favouring a suck-it-and-see approach over numerical models in MMO development leads to back-and-forth rebalancing and nerfing, which is no fun for the players or the developers (I imagine).

Of course, numerical modelling isn't necessary to play the game, but its still fun for some of us.

30% damage should help out quite a bit. Only you can really say whether it will push the AT over your own personal threshold for soloing speed.

It also depends on the sets you play more than pretty much any other archetype. Not only are the primaries incredibly diverse, but Sonic Blast kind of sticks out as an awesome soloing secondary.
-20% Res per attack, AoE sleep that's perma out of the box, balanced only by slightly poor AoE.

So something like Dark/Sonic should be very solo-able these days.

Confirmed yesterday that its quite possible to email Yin-O SO's across faction to my Praetorian. This means I can enjoy some aspects of SO power from level 10 onwards.

(Damage for Naturals and Muties, Accuracy for Magic, End Redux for Tech and Recharge for Science)

If anyone enterprising is looking for a niche, and has unlocked the store in Faultline, this one might be worth setting up as an email trade. I can't be bothered myself, but thought I'd pass it on.

Radiation Emission/Energy Blast Defender (or Energy Blast/Rad Emission Corrupter) would be an interesting and rare combo.
Thematically it matches, in that both are very science-y "Atomic Man!/Nuclear Dude!/Cosmic Guy!" powersets. Mechanically, you have the opportunity to make or break your own usefulness, either by scattering mobs out of your debuffs if you play badly, or keeping them hemmed in if you use it well. You've played Storm, so I guess you understand knockback a little bit.

Mastermind - try Ninja/Force Fields. They need bubbles more than any other pet, and don't need much in the way of damage boosting. The fire and forget nature of FF would work well with pets that need a lot of attention. This combo is rare for concept reasons I guess - an ancient/magical primary with a futuristic/science secondary.
Not that either robot ninja or magical barriers are unheard of...

Yep. Stalker Kinetic Shield provides the same S/L defence as Brute Kinetic Shield + Energy Cloak.
Since Stalkers don't get Energy Cloak, they get the +3.75% defence from it rolled into their main defence shields instead.

Stalkers do further benefit from the unsuppressed Defence in Hide.

Its similar to how Stalkers get higher values for Evasion (AoE toggle) in Super Reflexes. They don't get Lucky (AoE pasive), so the AoE defence from their toggle is boosted.

I'd just add some Resistance to Force Fields.

FF used to be one of the few ways to experience the Defence softcap. Ice Tankers and SR scrappers loved you for completing their powersets.
Now they may just shrug and move on because they're soft-capped anyway.

Cold Domination provides almost as much +Def as FF, but with a whole bunch of extras. And the gap can be closed by any player with a few IO sets, even on a Blaster.

As a precedent, Super Reflexes has been given some resistance, in the form of its sliding resistance.


You could add some resistance to the bubbles, which would further concentrate the power of the set in three powers. 10% in each (S/L/Toxic in Deflection, exotic in Insulation and another 10% in Dispersion) would add 30% to temmates when slotted.

OR, add some resistance to Force Bubble, making it a truly useful Tier 9 power?

This also gives you a place to stick the Steadfast IO in without taking Tough (always a cruel irony of pure defence sets over mixed ones ) and stops the entire set from being ganked by Devouring Earth or Earth Thorn Casters.


While I'm at it, I'd add some Psi resistance to Sonic Resonance. Maybe to Clarity.

Storm/Ice Blast Defenders get Blaster level Ice Storm and Blizzard, possibly with 30% extra damage while solo these days?

That may be a contender.

The values in your enhancements screen show you just the effects of the enhancements in that power. Global set bonuses, or the effects of Hasten, AM or Speed Boost, are not displayed there.

You can use your Combat Attributes tab to display your global recharge value, which shows you a percentage for set bonuses, Hasten and other buffs. e.g. with your two sets, you'll see 10% there, 80% if Hasten goes off, and so on.

But the game will not display the actual recharge time for Phantom Army anywhere.

So yeah, Local Man never sees "1m 0s" anywhere.

Keep chasing the bonuses though. They do become noticeable as they stack up. Hasten and AM fire off mroe quickly too, so the effect amplifies.

Sonic Resonance is a great support set that scales well to large teams.

Defenders get noticably better values than Corrupters, adding 58% Resistance to a team rather than 42%, and debuffing Resistance by 60% instead of 45%.

For further team support, choose either Sonic Blast to further debuff enemy resistance, or Dark Blast to debuff enemy To Hit and add another layer of safety.

Sonic/Sonic in particualr is well worth making as a Defender over a Corrupter. Try that.

Scrappers are certainly king after level 22 or so. That can be a long way away for a new player, though.

I started with a Blaster and then moved on to Scrappers later, and thus appreciated the extra toughness of a Scrapper rather than miss it if I'd gone Scrapper then Blaster.

What, conceptually, is Psi Melee anyway?

e.g. Fire Melee is "you can heat your hands up and set fire to people and burn them by touching them"

Electrical Melee is "you can electrify your skin and cause shocks to people at short range or by touching them"

What does "Psi melee" mean to people? I'm not sure there is a single concept that encapsulates it. Psylocke's probably the most famous example, she created "psychic knives" that cause some kind of telepathic pain on touch, or something like that...

Is "Psi Melee" transmitting a painful telepathic signal via touch, or using a short range telekinetic field to fight, or a mix between the two, or something else?

Kinetic Melee seems to fit the telekinetic concept fairly well I guess - you're fighting using a short range TK field of some kind.

Blasters are great early on. They're fun and flashy, but may start to slow down in the 30s. Very good for getting to grips with the game when you start.

Dominators are a bit like Blasters, with lower damage but better controls for more safety.


Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers all solo very well, combining good damage and robustness, but may take a little longer to come into their own.

Masterminds make good solo-ists, after a bit of a slow start with some combos.


Defenders, Tankers, Controllers, Corrupters are generally more team oriented, although the solo-ability varies greatly with the choice of powerset.


I'd suggest a Blaster or Dominator first for getting your feet wet, and make a melee character as a second character once you've levelled the Blaster/Dom a bit.

True. But -Dam makes sense too. Try punching at full strength when your nervous system's just been fried by telepathic assault.

-To Hit would also make sense. Short term stacking Mag 1 disorients would also work for a Psi blast set. Having a temporarily fried brain from a telepathic attack could be represented by a number of different debuffs or effects. We just happen to have -Recharge associated with Psi blasts in this game.

I guess all I'm saying is that Kinetic Melee wouldn't feel un-Psi when you play it.

I'd love an effective easy to use Combat Teleport power. My take:

Its a click power that requires an enemy target. When you activate it teleports you directly in front of the target, and you can of course queue up an attack to deliver once you port.

If the enemy is too close, or theres an object in the way or anything else which would red out the current teleport reticule, then the power doesn't activate same as if you don't have enough end or are out of range.
So you can target a distant enemy and run into range. If theres an obstacle in front of them run sideways and as soon as the spot in front of them is clear the power activates and you 'port.

This uses the same tech as the existing teleport reticule - checking the validity of a single destination point each frame. But instead of the point being specified by your mouse moving the reticle, its calculated based on yours and the targets position.

And rather than replace any power, add this as a new Tier 1 or Tier 2 to the pool, similar to how new powers were added to the Ancillary Power Pools.

Yep, I think it makes a fine candidate for any TK/Psi melee character.

The fact that its the wrong damage type is not really apparent while you're playing, and Psi attacks doing -Recharge is a pretty arbitrary decision made by the devs for this game.

I played a /SR Stalker to 50 without taking Mez protection and that worked.

However, I don't think I'd try it on a Stone Brute.

I got away with it by being softcapped to Melee, Ranged and AoE, and being down the bottom of any enemies threat list on a team. Solo, I could generally take out mezzers in one shot or at least disable them with a stun. Ranged mezzers alos didn't see me coming until I was in their face attacking.

At least you can build up some high S/L defence, but I forsee you having a hard time with ranged exotic mez - eg Mind Control powers, Rikti stun blasts, Freakshow Tesla cages, Devouring Earth mushroom spores and a whole heap of others.

Do give it a try though, at least. Its always fun to push received wisdom a little and see where it takes you. At worse, it'll cost you time, frustration and a respec.

Reason don't come into it, YaRRR!

Back in the beginning, animation times weren't factored into balancing powers. Fire got lucky with just over 1 second. Most Controller holds weigh in around 1.6 to 1.8 seconds. Tesla cage in Electrical Blast has always had an animation of 2.1 seconds, and I guess that's just been copied across to Electrical Control.

The Blast sets used to be more like this, and had all Tier 1 and 2 animations normalised to 1s and 1.67s a few issues back. Maybe the same will happen to Controller ST immobilises and ST holds one day? Possibly when the alternate animation system gets spread out to Controller sets?

Until then, its just the way it is.

I found it really beneifts my Fire, Dark and Willpower tanks, since it moves them from 50% Resistance to around 75% resistance for Smashing and Lethal. Thats half the incoming damage from Freak Swipers etc.

On an Invulnerable tanker, I'd say its less necessary. 90% S/L resist does look great on paper (instead of 67% or so from slotting the native Invulnerable powers), but since you're also packing 20 to 30% S/L Defence you can probably get by without it in almost all situations.

The Shadow was a kind of Thugs Mastermind - he had a small group of normal non-military followers (and two pistols).

Any Mastermind can be explained by robots, by the way. Your robots may look like Ninjas, thugs, demons or zombies of course...

I used to slot the holds for hold duration and recharge, but these days I find the base Hold duration is plenty long enough for the start of the game.

Without any enhancements at lower levels, you're able to permanenty hold at least two enemies, and often have another control (eg Deceive, Lift) that can keep a third one busy while you focus on taking them down.
This is more than enough to juggle three minions solo.

On a team, enemies are hopefully falling quickly enough that the extra hold duration would be wasted.

Recharge is handy for holding bosses as quickly as possible, I can agree on that. If you expect to face bosses regulalry, thats probably a good idea.

Depends what you plan to do on the way to 20. My advice is tailored more for solo-ists I guess.

I'd rather see power armour pieces (wrist mounted, shoulder mounted etc) come in as costume pieces and alternate animations for existing blast sets.


That way you could design a power armoured character with a variety of powers, eg. an Assualt Rifle set that fires bullets from the wrists and a Flamethrower mounted on the shoulder, or Energy Blasts that fire their AoEs from the chest and single targets from the hands.


A dedicated Power Armour set would lock the player into one set of game mechanics.

On the way to 22 you can get away with light accuracy slotting for most control powers ie on DO will do fine. Most ST holds and immobilises have 20% bonus accuracy, so a single DO puts them at around 1.2 * 1.16 = +40% accuracy. Plenty for fighting up to +2s.

I usually go 1 accuracy, maybe 1 end redux and as much damage as I can in the hold and immobilise while waiting for SOs. Before Stamina and SO's, damage per endurance is my main enemy, this seems like the best way to boost it.

Recharge slotting kicks in after I've got SO's and Stamina, and have the endurance to attack more quickly.