DrMike2000

I'd recommend a Brute too.

I'm not sure if I agree with Stone being a good farmer - Granite suffers from reduced recharge and damage. But does have a damage aura at least.

If you're planning to tear through +0/x8 maps for purple drops, for example, Fire, Electric or Dark with the Fighting pool might be a better choice. Damage auras and enough survivability without the penalties of Granite.

I can't argue with Electrical Melee - thats a great choice.

Wow. I never knew that Dominator Power Boost gave +98% End Drain, whereas Blaster Power Boost now only gives 78% after the recent-ish nerf to it.

I'd tried an Elec/Energy Blaster post-nerf and found it an exercise in frustration, since Power Boosted slotted Short Circuit would stop just short of draining most mobs.

However, an Elec/Energy/Mu Dom would still have no AoE -recovery, would they?

Ive played an Elec/Elec Blaster and Kin/Elec Defender to 50, and the defender was a far better sapper due to the range on Transference - until they're sapped you dont want them too close. Two PBAoE's (one with a long animation) was often too risky for the Blaster.

So you're off to a good start choosing those sets. I didn't take Power Sink on my defender, but I think it will help a lot.

You won't be able to take team-sized alphas with just sapping as mitigation. You'll be most effective going in after the initial volley is unloaded on a tank, brute or other alpha soaker and then shutting everyone down.
Solo, I use to take on maybe six orange minions and a lieutenant/boss, using Transference to shut down the big guy and crossing my fingers and using Transfusion to stay alive for the second Short Circuit. It never felt safe though.

The one alternative build for sapping these days is Electrical Control. It doesn't have any -Recovery, but Conductive Aura will often stop enemies from attacking on my new-ish Elec/Elec Dom. Of course, with Controller/Dominator level control, your hardly need it.

In summary, any sapping build means struggling up hill a little due to the way the powers are set up. But Kinetics/Electrical blast are the best combo I've found.

I'm training myself not to bid creep on small items (ie less than a million).

I've got two billionaires and a number of characters with hundreds of millions dotted around my accounts (and 1000 unpsent merits at least) - why on Earth should I spend extra time at the market saving myself a few hundred thousand in a fictional currency that can't be spent outside the game? And that's small change for some of the people here.

I also figure it is generous tipping and encourages people to keep putting salvage on the market or crafting generic IOs for my convenience.

Sonic Resonance would add about 42% Resistance to pets with slotted powers at MM values.
Existing pets with resistance get 26%, so this would push them up to 68% or so to the types they're already resistant to. The Pet resistance IO would cap it at 75% (if that is the pet cap, I dont know).

Considering you're not giving them any other defensive bonuses that isn't too much. No defence, no heals. Most pets have limited resiatance (eg Lethal, Cold, Psi for Robots) and Sonic does have a big gaping Psi hole in its resistances.

I think it would really nicely as an MM secondary set.

A friend gave me trial codes.

I've always been a huge fan of superheroes.
I'd previously been in love with Freedom Force and looked down my nose at CoH for having less character customisation, but once I played it I got hooked big-time.

1. Male

2. I play everything, but tend towrds support characters like Defenders, Controllers and Corrupters due to the wider variety of their powersets, and the power they can achieve in larger groups.

3. Redside mainly, because the content's newer to me

4. Television (and villains in general), Rikti War Zone arc, Praetorian power arc, Tips missions.

5. The high degree of character customisation is a huge draw. Its easy to play with enough depth in character creation via the invention system to keep me hooked.

6. Don't play any other games

7. 4 1/2 years

8. 8 current characters, ranging from 20 to 37 currently. 17 level 50s who are mostly retired.

9. I buy invention sets as I level up, and plan out builds for soft-cap etc. I play at +2/x1 mostly.

Your tactics with Invoke Panic from the other thread could be replaced with Mass Hypnosis when you get that from the Psi pool - the Kinetics powers that don't alert a feared target also won't wake a sleeping one.

So maybe when you hit 41 you could maybe do a respec that swaps Fighting for the Presence pool and uses Mass Hypnosis?

I found Shout to be the worse offender, which was cool as I skipped it on both my Sonic Blast characters.
Scream and Shriek sound fine to me, but then again I'm over 40 and don't hear all the high notes. I can't remember hearing a sigh noise in Shriek, so maybe I'm just the right kind of selective deaf for this set?

That's a genius idea. I knew the Presence pool had to work for someone.

I took a Kin/Elec to 50 and found him to be the most successful sapper I've played (until maybe my current Elec/Elec Dom).
It still wasn't a patch on Controller-level control, and was a high risk high reward playstyle, but Kinetics will always be that way. (And End Drain in Electrical Blast is broken IMO)

Solo it was sap the boss (or biggest threat) at range with Transference, fire of Short Circuit as the spawn get close enough and hope Transfusion keeps you alive until SC recharges.
In a team, it was make sure aggro is established, and drop into a more support/buff-oriented role.

I'd definitely grab Tesla Cage AND Dominate. Two holds are great when facing an ugly boss or two leiutenants/Sappers/whatever.


Beyond that, there is Plan B - build for defence.
With Siphon Speed, you have unsuppressed combat speed, so you can generally act like a Superspeedster and kite to avoid melee attacks. Ranged defence is pretty easy to build for, since Defenders get top-level bonuses from the power pools.

You need:
Tough (with Steadfast IO) + Weave (slotted with Red Fortune) = 11%
Combat Jumping of Hover = 2.5% (I prefer CJ for immobilise protection, its important with a enemy-based heal)
Manouvers (slotted with RF) = 5.5%

For 19% Defence vs all.
The two Red Fortunes, and two Thunderstrikes in CB and LB make that 31.5% vs Ranged attacks. (Same as a SR Scrapper on IOs, 1 small purple from the cap)
Add in Blood Mandate in Voltaic Sentinel and 5 pieces of Aegis in Tough and you have 35% vs Ranged, 27.5% vs AoE, easily enough to get by on if you act like the Flash or Quicksilver and keep moving.
Another Thunderstrike somewhere (eg Dominate) gives you yet another 3.75% vs Ranged, you choose how far you want to push it.

I've never tried a high-defence Kineticist before, but it looks good on paper. Give it a go, its a fairly cheap build. I'd love to hear if it improves your experience, somnambulist.

Whatever makes the "Mission Complete" text appear and exit button pop up could start the timer, rather than exiting the mission starting the timer like it does now. That's hardly new tech.

I think that's an excellent idea. I've sometimes logged out on completing a mission to avoid loading the outside world, if I'm in a hurry.

My Widow and Soldier are Praetorian police officers. They believe their own actions to be heroic (responsibility rather than power) and have come to the part of Primal Earth that needs them the most - the Rogue Isles.

So while in game terminology they're Villains and Soldiers of Arachnos (and accumulate villain merits), they are in fact heroic Praetorian law enforcers.

I thought about taking them blue-side, but have played the villain content less, so decided to keep them where they are.

I think this could be an interesting mechanic - static pets that are dependent on your proximity to remain. Alternate animations and themes beyond sorcery would be cool, I'll take that as read for pretty much any power suggestion though.

I didn't explore the Sorcery sets in Champs during my brief stay there, but I see where you're coming from.

Currently we have Traps, which summons a number of static pets (Triage Beacon, Acid Mortar, Poison Gas Trap and Trip Mine) - you'd be making a set kind of like that but hampered more by casting times than recharge?

The common complaint with say Triage Beacon is that on a steamrolling team you whip it out and the teams moved on already. This would be even worse on a set with 3.75 sec animations, so you end up with a buff set that works best when the group's in trouble and slowed down, which is actually kind of cool.

Staple recovery and regen buffs are good.
The exploding sigils could be a bit trickier if introduced to Controllers, who can lock down a spawn and then toe-bomb them in safety. This may be why Controller havent had Traps yet - they're designed as a low risk/low damage AT.

Nice idea though, because it would play differently.

Yeah, I have a hard time remembering what life was like before IOs.
I think I used to slot attacks 2 Acc, 3 Dam, 1 End or Recharge. Or was it Acc, Rech, End Redux and 3 Dam?

To be honest, I find giving people advice frustrating if they complain about running out of endurance or not being effective enough, but refuse to use IOs.

Thunderstrike is an excellent place to start if you have ranged attacks.

The set bonuses for 6 pieces give you extra Recovery, Accuracy and Ranged/Energy/Negative Defence
Its cheap, and requires no expensive orange salvage
It can be slotted form level 27 onwards
The raw enhancements give you ED-capped damage and 57% Accuracy, End Redux and Recharge.
Slot three of these sets and you'll be a faster, sleeker more efficient blaster who gets hit less. You'll be able to feel the difference over 3 Dam, 1 Acc, 1 End, 1 Rech SO's.

The melee equivalent set, Crushing Impact, is a bit less spectacular and a bit harder to come by, but offers gloabl Accuracy recharge and extra HP. Along with the actual power enhancement values, it'll feel noticeably better than SO's.

I always start with one of those two sets at level 27 onwards. Expect to spend a good few million outfitting a character (eg 20 million).

----------------------

If this sounds like a lot of influence, start a generic IO crafting scheme on your way to level 27.
Pick a recipe type from Damage, End reduction, End Mod, Heal or Recharge.*
Buy recipes and ingredients for 10 level 25 and leave them overnight.
Craft them and put them on the market at around 100,000 maybe?
Then buy 10 recipes and ingredients for 10 level 30's and leave overnight.
Craft them, which will give you a crafting badge and memorise the recipes - you can now make them without a recipe for half price.

Then every play session, put in bids for 10 stacks of salvage required at a lowish price. Craft and list ten generic IOs and you should be able to make a million or two a day easily in about 5 minutes.

*Accuracy is good too, but the salvage tends to be pricey.

Having just bought 9 sets of Positrons recently, hell yeah!

Posi's one of those "Great set bonuses, rubbish power values" sets, since its packing capped damage, 40% Acc and End redux, and a measly 22% recharge for the 5 non-proc pieces.

It would be interesting to have a set like Thunderstrike/Crushing Impact/Multistrike that gave capped damage and 65% Acc/End redux/Recharge.

What set bonuses should it have, though?

Recharge should be out, to leave Posi's as the valid choice for the Recharge builder.
+Health, +Regen are good possibilites. Maybe a modest defence bonus like +2.5% Melee Defence, or even a dual Defence in slots 5 and 6 like +1.25% AoE, +1.25% Melee for a cheap all-yellow set. All of that at once might be a bit too defense heavy.

That would introduce an element of choice thats currently lacking, to replace the "Grunt, Positron's again" default choice we currently have.

To me, an Offender just means a Defender who takes and slots their attacks. If you've got a reasonably continuous attack chain with some AoE, and its all 3 slotted for damage, and you use it, you're an Offender.

Sonic Blast is the top damage blast set due to the stacking -Res debuffs.

Rad, Traps, Storm and Dark make good solo Offender sets, but any primary can be a good offender build.

Its also a combination of build and playstyle.
For example, I remember playing with an awesome Empath/Energy Blast offender who'd keep us buffed, heal when necessary (eg people getting below 50%) but used her blasts to cause absolute chaos in the enemy ranks, both mitigating and causing plenty of damage. If she aggro'd it, she'd keep it bouncing around until it was dead.
The exact same build could have been played differently by prioritising heals if anyone fell below 90%, and hanging back and attacking less to avoid aggro.

The main benefits fo Fly (3D movement) can be had for the price of a 10,000 inf with a temporary jetpack these days.

Having said that, my current stable of characters has 1 warshade, 1 superspeedster, 1 teleporter, 3 fliers and 2 non-travellers who just use jetpacks.
Often on the tp-er or speedster I'll just use the jetpack because its handier.

Flight has always been my travel power of choice.

Sonic's OK, but I can't help but feel it got a bit short-changed by Sonic Blast being so awesome. (Kind of like how Blaster Psi Blast is sub-par and Mental manipulation is top-notch, the thematic pairing balances out but the sets dont.)
Sonic Resonance should be the king of -Res debuffing, but in practice its not much better than Storm or Cold, or even Defender Sonic Blast.

I'd agree with most of what's been said here - you consume a fair amount of your personal end keeping everyone else more effective, but never mind-blowingly so.

The Res shields turn squishies into Scrappers (and pretty poor ones on Controller numbers) but turn Scrappers (and Khelds and VEATS) into Tanks and Tankers into adamantium walls.

I guess there hasn't been many guides about it because there are very few subtelties to using the set. Its great for Offenders who want to blast and active Controllers who want to control.

Do you have Tough?

That can make a big difference to Fiery Armor. I've found this to be the case on my Fire/Fire Brute - her surviviability shot up considerably when I got Tough.

I found TA/A defenders very difficult to solo compared to most other Defenders, due to the lack of reliable per-spawn damage mitigation.
Looking at the numbers on Corrupters, they are even worse off.

I also think Trick Arrows could use a bit of a buff.

I like your ideas, Vanden.

If the devs wanted to make Detention Field into a toggle, they could do it. Castle may not be able to do it with a spreadsheet of game data, but with some programming help it is definitely possible.
Just like swappable ammo, Dual Blade combos, insta-recharge-Power-Siphon-criticals and other goodies we now hold in our hands. I'm sure all required some extensions to the game code rather than just data changes.

I think it would be a very good idea to do this, and make the power more useful. Alternatives would be:
1) Apply a Mag 4 stun for a few seconds when the phase wears off
2) Make powers targetting an intangible foe queue up like the target was out of range. This way you don't waste attacks on the intangible enemy, but can be prepared to spike them when the bubble wears off.


Force Bolt Mag 1 damage. Yep! I agree with that one.

Repulsion Bomb could use a quicker animation, yes. Provide the Hand Clap one and an alternate one as well, maybe even a faster version of the current beachball toss.

Repulsion Field, get rid of the unmodifiable endurance drain. Knocking an enemy off you isn't that fantastic. Do the same for Repel.

Force Bubble, I can't say. I have very little experience with it.

I'm loving the visuals so far, but I see your point.

I've coloured all the powers white and yellow, and I'm not sure if I pass local Occupational Health and Safety standards with Conductive Aura strobing like that.

You answered it yourself, Jibikao.

Characters in Praetoria havent chosen a side yet (Hero or Villain), they're effectively a third side - undecided. If supergroups were allowed in Praetoria they'd be sort of undecided groups (or Resistance/Loyalist groups or something) which everyone would leave when they left at level 20.