DrMike2000

If you are looking for a support orientated character, I think Aid Other complements Force Fields rather nicely.

Not only does it heal (and that's very handy when the lucky Tank Swiper takes away over half a teammates health bar), but it breaks sleep - the one effect that Dispersion bubble doesn't protect against.

I didn't take Medicine, and I can remember standing near a slept Controller on my team several times, wishing he'd wake up when things were going bad. Since I'd bubbled him, he wasn't about to take damage, and sleeps can last a long time uninterupted. I really wished I had Aid Other at that time.

Buffing sets don't solo as well, it is true. On the other hand, their buffs do not diminish by 80% against the hardest targets in the game, unlike the debuffer's debuffs.

I was pointing out that magicj's proposal would create more imbalance between sets rather than redress the existing imbalance between ATs.

I'd slot for some personal defence. You're the team keystone, keeping everyone un-stunned and un-held. If you fall, the rest can follow pretty quickly.

Recharge isn't hugely important for Force Fielders because you have no long recharge powers.

I'd six slot your three single target blasts with Thunderstrike.
This gives some +Recovery, good Defence, high accuracy and very nice values for the powers, including good end reduction. You're currently going to knock enemies around too much, you're better off supporting your team by doing decent damage with your blasts and being accurate. This will give you global accuarcy and good acc in your blasts, for knocking away troublesome bosses etc. who are bothering your teammates up close.

Six-slot Red Fortune in Diseprsion and Manouvers, will give maximum defence and endurance reduction. Your ally shield slotting is good as it is.

To get these extra slots, dont put any extra slots in Personal Force Field or Fly, just slot 1 recharge in PFF and 1 fly in fly. Also lose the Recharge in Repulsion Field, and I think you're even again. 4 slotting Force Bolt is good here for the knockback protection.

All up, this will give you an extra 16.25% Ranged Defence, with Dispersion, Manouvers and Hover you're now at around 40% defence to all ranged attacks, making you much less likely to get shut down by a sleep or ranged damage, and les likely to need Personal Force Field, which while protecting you, makes the rest of your team more vulnerable.
It'll make you more end efficient and accurate, and you won't lose a whole heap of recharge either, since red fortune provides some.

And its all very cheap and available sets.

Self buffing when solo wouldn't work.

Empathy Defenders would get permanent Instant Healing level regen, enough recovery to overcome nuke crashes and +100% recharge pretty much perma with slotted Adrenalin Boost. Add in self-Fortitude and they'd never want a teammate ever again.

Meanwhile, Dark or Rad Defenders would get nothing.


The support sets are the most diverse in the game and often don't scale well from a Primary to Secondary.
e.g. Force Fields and Sonic Resonance do scale well, the controller/Corrupter versions offer 75% of the main bonuses.

Empathy doesn't, because the main limiting factor is not the actual heal values or recovery boosts but the recharge. If Empathy on Controllers had longer recharges for the auras, Fort and AB, that would make Empathy Defenders much better off relative to their Controller counterparts than they are now.

(Hope this doesn't happen BTW, my main is an /Emp Controller. )

I disagree. Martial Arts is one of the best powersets to watch in my opinion.

I find Dual Blades (and Dual Pistols) a little bit too flashy animation wise, whereas Martial Arts has just the right combination of speed, practicality and visual flair.

SR - you can skip Quickness, and Elude if you go for soft-capping with sets, which is pretty easy. The passives build up your Defence, but also your defence debuff resistance, which is very good to have since defence is all you get pretty much. They also add some resistance when youre low on health.

MA - skip either Crane Kick or Cripplling Axe Kick according to taste. You can skip Thunder Kick if you take the Fighting pool, and substitute Boxing or Kick for it.
A lot of people skip Cobra Strike.
On my Scrapper I skipped Eagle's Claw, but wouldn't on a Stalker.

A very good question, Wiggz.

My stock answer would be that Defenders bring more AoE damage than most Controllers. Thats about all that's in it these days.

Controllers can get a double-recharge AoE in their epic, and Possibly Hot Feet or Carrion Creepers depending on their primary, but nothing like a couple of solid repeateable AoE attacks that Defenders have access to.
On a team thats buffed up the wazoo from either, thats probably more important than control, since once you have enough safety to prevent any deaths, you're safe enough.

What a bizarre decision, if that is the case.

"Hey, lets make Cold Domination not support Ice Tankers as well as it could!"

Kin/Electric has some cool synergies.

1) You can effectively end drain with Short Circuit and Transference. Both of these will sap a boss in two shots and keep him that way until he falls.
2) Electric has no cones. Your AoEs both work at melee range, where you're getting your own heals, Fulcrums and end boosts.
3) Tesla Cage stops your healing anchor running off. This last one isn't unique to Elec, but it helps.

Not a bad idea, Crashed.

My biggest beef with teleport is the immobilise at the exit point. If the immobilise and the hover broke when you tried to move, it would be much smoother.
Also, the hover duration could then be increased a bit to compensate for lag.

Making the power into a toggle would do this really well, since the player can toggle teleport off whenever they want, instead of having to wait for the 2 second immobilise to wear off. The player's then in full control of how long they hover, and how long they're immobilised. Very cool thinking.

Oh yeah, I would!

Targetted AoE's are one of the best candidates for Frankenslotting, since there's only one set with good bonuses (Positron's Blast), and it doesn't have fantastic enhancement values for the power its slotted in.

There is not Targetted AoE equivlent to Thunderstrike or Crushing Impact, which give great bonuses and good frankenslotting value for the set.

The only disparities for players I can think of are:

Increase Density - buffs Smashing and Energy resistance (but not lethal)
Parry - increases Lethal Defence (but not smashing)

Thunderstrike is definitely a great set here. Starting with:

TT:Manouvers, slotted: 8%
Manouvers, slotted : 5.5%
Hover: 2.5%
SteadFast IO: 3%
Foresight, slotted: 12%

adding up to 31%, Thunderstrike full sets in Mental Blast, TK Blast and Subdue add an extra 11.25% to bring you to 43.25

Slot Red Fortune in Manouvers or TT:Manouvers and you're done!

If you have a spare power pool and want to build up your Melee and AoE defence too, Combat Jumping is a nice buy - it runs on next to no endurance and provides an extra 3% Def with a single IO in the default slot.

I'd maybe suggest slotting Frostbite with the 3 damage procs it can take - Positrons, Trap of the Hunter, and the slow one (whose name I forget).

The Grav Anchor hold proc is nice, but you should be safe enough without it.

I'd then add three Acc/End pieces, or two Acc/End and an End redux IO. That will give you a fast spammable source of AoE damage, not hugely reliable, but not terrible.

But first, get Chillblain and a pool melee attack.

Crey Eliminators fire sleep grenades
Devouring Earth fungoids use sleep spores, both PBAoE and ranged AoE
Carnie Illusionist's Blind has a sleep effect built in (but also Holds, so only relevant to FF and Sonic Defenders and the like)
Fortunata bosses use Will Domination I think

Playing my FF Defender like a tank back when sleep turned off all toggles made me quite aware how much sleep there is in the game.

Yeah, you only get two powersets. You can choose from up to 4 other power pools.
You also get a Patron powerset after completing a story arc at level 41, but thats not important right now.

You'll probably want Fitness for Stamina, since Dark Armour can be quite endurance heavy due to its heal. Fighting is also a good choice for Tough, espeically for Brutes. And a travel power like Teleport makes 3, thats all your basic needs covered.

Dark Armor is a little bit odd on Stalkers. Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear are auras that stun and fear any enemies nearby, but also break you out of Hide, since you attack the target when they trigger. On a Brute you can run these and the damage aura (which Stalkers dont get) full-time if you have the endurance.

If you like the idea of turning invisible, no worries, Dark Armor for Brutes has a stealth power. I think a Dark/Dark Brute might be an easier character to start with.

Oh yeah, Brutes can be small and skinny, and Stalkers can be big and bulky. Your look and archetype are completely independent.

The best way to think about it is that Hasten (and all powers) recover 1 point per second. Hasten needs 450 points to recharge.

Recharge buffs change the number of points you accumulate every second, so with hasten active, you get 1.7 points back per second for each power that's recharging.

So, click Hasten. For the next 120 seconds you accumulate 120*1.7 = 204 points
You still need another 246 points for Hasten to recharge, and will have to wait 246 seconds for them to accumulate at 1 point per second.

So the total recharge time will be 120 + 246 = 336 seconds.

Good on you!

I don't think I did missions or teamed for the first year I played. My first 50, an Elec/Elec Blaster, mostly did solo street sweeping to get there.

The beauty of it was that you face a range of different level enemies while you're doing it. There's a group of 10 even-cons, BLAM! without even thinking. Then you spot a big juicy bag of XP thats a +5 Leiutenant, and wonder if you can...

I have particularly good memopries of hunting aorund the hills in Founders Fall, looking for Fungoids. They could mez me, but gave much more XP than most equivalent leiutenants.

I still street sweep occasionally for badges. When I'm trying to do Family bosses or Fake Nems or whatever, I try to find a good patch where theres a challenge and XP involved.

Kinetics doesn't provide you with a whole deal of safety. Its kind of like soloing a Blaster.

I'd stick with Dark/Dark for a bit. It was my first solo Defender and really turned me on to the archetype.
Fearsome Stare gives you a safe opener, Tar Patch ups your damage, and at 16 and 20 you get a good fast AoE attack chain going, allowing you to handle large groups at once.
Once you hit 22 and get Stamina, SOs and both NightFall and Tenebrous Tentacles it really starts to take off.

Very good point, Leo.

Its not just Sands of Mu any more that benefits, its the Grenades (Stun and Damage), Plasmatic Taser and Envenommed Dagger as well. -Def has become more useful these days because of this.

If you've re-opened your account, you should be able to choose a permanent power from your 12 month veteran badge. (If not, wait 12 months then read this )

Get Sands of Mu.

It can't be enhanced, so accuracy is a problem, but you're runnign Rage and Invincibility, so accuracy is NOT a problem for Inv/SS.

It does good damage that can't be enhanced, and as a result, is not affected by the Rage crash either.

It's almost as if it were made for Inv/SS tankers.

-Res debuffs have a very similar effect to a max hp debuff.

Making all attacks do 25% more damage to you is the same as dropping your maximum health to 80%* of normal.

* 80% = 100% / (1 +.25)

I think your analysis is spot on, Bowler.

During normal PvE play, you're hitting over 90% of the time anyway, so -DEF has little effect.

Against really hard targets like a Paragon Protector in god-mode, the -DEF from most powers (eg Radiation Blast, PeaceBringer attacks) isn't enough to make a difference and you can get stuck in the catch-22 where you need ot hit to apply the -DEF.

Autohit powers with good numbers like Radiation Infection are different, they do help against hard targets.

The two main advantages I see:

1) You can slot the Achilles Heel proc for -Res in your attacks.

2) It allows temporary powers to hit more reliably. Thats a big bonus for a solo-ing Controller, Defender or Tank with the Sands of Mu 12 month vet power.

Superhero combat is often depicted as fast and mobile, yet within games it often devolves to two characters stading toe to toe engaged in a hit point race to see who falls first. Its also common within superhero fiction to have characters whose primary abilities are movement related. Superman is a superstrong invulnerable guy who also happens to fly, (as a pool power in CoX terms), but for the Hawkman, flight is his main power, his defining attribute. Similarly, Nightcrawler teleports, the Toad leaps and the Flash runs very fast.

I'll outline a group of powersets designed to bring these concepts, and fast kinetic combat, to CoX. And also let these characters do their thing from level one, instead of having to mope about Kings Row complaining about broken wings and mental blocks against using their superspeed.

I've designed these as secondaries for Brutes, Stalkers and Scrappers (possibly extensible to Tankers). The reason for this is to enable the player to mix many other powersets with their movement abilities. If you want a flying angel who fights with a flaming sword (Fiery Melee/Combat Flight), or a hero who clubs people with his Anti-Gravity Rod (War Mace/Combat Flight) you can do so. The melee classes also cover basic abilities anyone with flight could use - pick up a weapon or learn a bit of self defence, and so suit these characters who's defining feature is their movement power.

The three archetypes also provide extra flexibity. A big tough steam-train speedster who uses inertia is a Brute, a stealthy blue-furred teleporter is a Stalker, and so on.

TECH REQUIREMENTS - CHARGE ATTACKS

These sets are mostly designed to use the existing game mechanics available in new ways. They also require a new piece of tech, of charge attacks.
Current powers that move the player (Teleport, Shield Charge) use the targetting reticle to let the player find a suitable position where they can appear. The reticle will red out and refuse to work if placed in the wrong spot. This works well, but its clumsy to use, as you can test by trying to teleport a Scrapper around accurately in combat.

Charge attacks would be click powers without a reticle, and move you to a new spot in front of your target, ie draw a line from them to you, and then step back 7 feet or so (typical melee range). If that spot is occupied (ie a targetting reticle would red out there) the attack remains queued up, as if the target is out of range or blocked. The player can thus move around to find a good approach angle before charging, or switch targets. This should be possible, since by moving the player would be moving a virtual targetting reticle for their new position, just in a different way.

Each set is based around a charge attack that gives you an important bonus, encouraging you to move around the battlefield as you fight.

COMBAT TELEPORTATION

The Combat Teleportation set is designed to emulate a fighter who ports around the battlefield unprdictably. As long as they keep moving, they are hard to hit, and can even cause enemies to hit each other in the confusion.
This is primarily positional defence that gives around 32% Defence to all three positions once slotted, with moderate DDR of around 60% or so. It layers this basic defence with some control via confuse effects. APower pools and Ios would allow the player to soft-cap fairly easily, but the defence is always situational due to Combat Hop.

Tier 1: Teleport. As per the pool power, you use the targetting reticle to move long distances. I'd modify it so that the immobilise and hover at the exit point breaks if you move. (I'd extend this to normal pool Teleport too...)

Tier 2: Combat Hop. This uses the charge attack mechanism to place you in front of an enemy. If the teleport succeeds, and moves you more than 7 feet or so, it also grants a Defence bonus of +10% vs Melee, Ranged and AoE for 10 seconds. This bonus does not
stack. Could also provide a small +To Hit bonus, around 5%. The defence bonus does not stack, so that the value for normal builds can be decent without overpowering high end Recharge builds. Intended to be used with a primary attack queued up staright after.
Recharge: 2 seconds

Tier 3: Teleport Foe.

Tier 4: Evasion. A Standard toggle providing +10% Defence to Melee and Ranged attacks, with some DDR.

Tier 5: Strange Metabolism. Mez protection toggle. Provides 5% Energy and Negative Resistance, and 40% End Drain resistance.

Tier 6: Awareness. Battlefield awareness of where not to land, providing +10% Defence to AoE attacks, with some DDR.

Tier 7: Misdirection. A Confuse toggle with a wide radius (20 feet, and a small chance (20% per 2 seconds, Mag 3) of inflicting a 2 second confuse on the target. This is only active while the Defence bonus from Combat Jump is active. As you port about, enemies sometimes shoot each other through the spot youve just vacated.

Tier 8: Team Teleport. Reticle activated. Adds a +5% Def to all and +5% To Hit buff to every member within 10 feet of you, and takes them with you to the reticle position. Also casts a PBAoE minor confuse on arrival (40% chance of Mag 3 2 second confuse)
Recharge, 60 seconds, ie once per spawn opener once slotted.

Tier 9: Multi-port: You teleport across a group of enemies quickly, surprise attacking each one in turn before returning to your start point. You get a big +50% Melee and +Range Def bonus for 4 seconds (or less), turn invisible for 4 seconds, and activate a Chain Induction like effect on your targets, visualised by your fist appearing out of nowhere hitting them. (like the Sands of Mu effects, use a standard fist). You "rematerialise" ie lose the Def bonus and invisibility when the chain induction finishes.
Recharge, 60 seconds, High damage.

Stalkers: Add Hide at Tier 1, bump everything up and no Multi-port.

COMBAT LEAPING

Combat Leaping is a more layered approach, just to mix things up, with some overall Fitness style bonuses to suit the athletic nature of the set. Some Positional def, some regen and resistance, and some offensive bonuses. During combat, the slotted powerset
gives 24% Defence, backed up by some resiatnce and regeneration bonus, like Willpower lite.
This set would allow you to skip Fitness and a Travel Power, although Combat Jumping, Hurdle and even Jump Kick may still be attractive choices.

Tier 1: Superleap, as per the travel power. It suppresses, but to a lesser extent than normal, say to Ninja Run levels.

Tier 2: Combat Leaping, as per the pool power, but offering +5% Defence to all

Tier 3: Combat Lunge, a charge attack to the target, provides +10% Defence to all positions, and +20% Damage buff for the next 10 seconds. Recharge 8 seconds base, medium damage. The defence buff does not stack, but the damage buff does. I'm envisioning a handspring followed by a solid kick on landing, this would be a great candidate for alternate animations. Since the charge attack mechanism may be more of a teleport than a continuous move, this could be jump up very high and fast, teleport, descend very fast.

Tier 4: Peak Fitness. A passive giving +50% regen and +30% Recovery, both enhanceable.

Tier 5: Enhanced Metabolism: Mez protection (maybe not to immobilise, since Combat Leaping covers that) with a Regen bonus, similar to Integration.

Tier 6: Enhanced Resilience: Smashing/Lethal Resistance toggle, 15% (enhancebale to 24% or 42% with enhanced Tough added in)

Tier 7: Dazzling Speed: AoE taunt aura with a confuse %age, as you draw fire by covering the battlefield erratically.

Tier 8: Heavy Landing: An AoE charge attack using a reticle, basically like Shield Charge but less damage. Knockdown, scalar 1.0 damage. Recharge 60 seconds base

Tier 9: Avoidance: An Elude-lite modern god-mode. 300 second unenhanceable recharge, provides 90 seconds of +RunSpeed and +7.5% Defence to all positions followed by a 50% end crash. Slotted, this, Combat Leaping and Combat Lunge provide 36% defence to all,
so the softcap is quite close.

Stalkers: No Dazzling Speed, Hide at Tier 1 and move everything up.

COMBAT FLIGHT

Combat Flight is for characters who rely on swift erratic flight patterns to avoid the hits. Hawkman, Angel, Northstar and Aurora fit this mould. It's another positional defence based set. I though about making it reistance based just to change things, thinking of Cannonball, but stuck to defence. This powerset is for vanilla fliers who do little else, not invulnerable supers who can also fly. This is mainly defence, with a bit of DDR, and some small resistance thrown in. When all working correctly, this gives 32% Defence to all positions. DDR should amount to about 60% slotted at level 50.

Combat Flight doesn't rely on a charge attck to protect you and keep you moving, rather forces you to move via the Tier 3 and 6 toggles that rewards you for keeping your distance from attackers. It makes sense that fliers woudn't like confined spaces.

Tier 1: Flight. Like the pool power, but suppresses to sprint speed rtaher than unslotted hover.

Tier 2: Combat Flight. Like the pool power but faster, uses the flight animation instead of the hover pose, and adds 5% defence
to all.

Tier 3: Manoueverability. You are hard to pin down and target.
This works like Invincibility in reverse. 15% Defence vs Melee and Ranged, -3% per enemy nearby to a maximum of five. The buff lasts for ten seconds, ticks every 2 and does not stack with itself, but the highest value of the last few ticks still applies.

Your primary forces you into melee range, this power makes sure you periodically leave it. Provides some DDR too.

Tier 4: Charge attack that knocks the target down and does medium damage.

Tier 5: Sky Commander: Standard anti-Mez toggle, with some DDR.

Tier 6: Awareness: Like Manouverability for AoE defence, with some DDR.

Tier 7: Group Fly: Without the accuracy penalty. You can carry non-flying members of your team. Doesn't work on allies running Rooted or Granite Armor.

Tier 8: Seasoned Flier: Passive +HP and +7.5% Resistance, like True Grit.

Tier 9: Dive Bomb. A Shield Charge like attack on a longer timer, similar to what Shield charge will be post-adjustment.

Stalkers: No Dive Bomb, move everything up one Tier.

COMBAT SPEED

Combat Speed is the defence of the classic speedster, moving too fast for the eye to follow and dodging or outrunning bullets with ease. I've given this set the hole of lower melee defence, to keep the player kiting mobs and forcing them to use ranged attacks. It's based heavily on my experiences with Kinetics characters in low levels, where Siphon Speed provided some great mitigation.
Melee Defence will be 16% slotted, other positions run at 28%. Extra defence is gained from unsupressed movement speed and Whirlwind, and the set carries good offensive bonuses from Quickess and Inertia.

Tier 1: Superspeed. Like the pool power, but doesn't suppress.

Tier 2: Quickness. A toggle that provides +20% Recharge and +Run Speed like Sprint.

Tier 3: Drive by punch. A Charge attack that does medium damage, chance of stun, and provides +10% Defence to all positions for 10 seconds. Recharge 4 seconds. Defence does not stack, but mutliple stacks count with Inertia.

Tier 4: Bullet Racer. +7.5% Defence vs Ranged attacks, passive

Tier 5: Enhanced Reflexes. Mez toggle. Provides +10% to Hit and 7.5% resistance to S/L/F/C/E/N.

Tier 6: Inertia. A toggle that provides a stackable +25% damage per Drive By Punch due to the momentum you accumulate.

Tier 7: Bomb Dodger. +7.5% Defence vs AoE passive.

Tier 8: Whirlwind. A click PBAoE doing scalar 1.0 damage and knockup, 40% chance of Stun. Recharge 30 seconds. Maybe add Taunt to this?

Tier 9: Burst of Speed, a modern god-mode. Provides +200% regen, +100% Recovery and +10% Defence to Melee, 5% to Ranged and AoE for 90 seconds. 300 second unenhanceable recharge. Puts you at 32% vs Melee, 36% vs Ranged and AoE when slotted.
Crash causes loss of 50% Endurance.

Stalkers: Combine Bullet Racer and Bomb Dodger as Tier 6, move everything before that up one tier.

COMPARISONS WITH EXISTING SETS

Super Reflexes takes 7 powers to give you mez protection and 32% Defence to all positions. It does give superior DDR to any of these sets though, and the defence bonuses for SR do not rely on you moving.

Shield Defence is the other obvious comparison, with similar defence values and a charge attack, with a few extra bonuses thrown like True Grit and AAO. These sets attempt to balance roughly with Shield Defence (minus the overpowered Shield Charge) in numbers.

All sets have been given at least one place to slot the Steadfast Unique IO, out of fairness.

WHY NOT TANKERS?

The classic tanker role doesn't fit with darting around very well. To tank you need some other powers, like invulnerability or toughness, at which point you should take another secondary and the pool powers. These powers sets are for characters who only
fly or move fast one way or another. Plus, the other three melee archetypes use the same numbers, making it easier to balance.

WHAT ABOUT PVP?

I have no idea Unsuppressed movement could definitely be problematic in PVP.