Elaith

1) I've got a lv 50 ice/DB and shes quite fun, works quite well.

2) As the other poster said, yes it gives more then just BF alone. However I personally stopped using it as I got high enough level for other combos to become available that used some of empowers steps. By time I had the whole secondary slotted my attack chain was essentially BF->sweep combo->BF->Attack Vitals combo on repeat. Against single targets I will sometimes still use empower, but when AoEing I prefer to use the other combos.

3) Yes you will notice lethal resistant enemies, but honestly the set hits hard enough that even when fighting robots it's not all that bad. And against anything that isn't lethal resistant, you'll mow through them pretty fast.

A quick note on the damage. The damage feels a bit lower then it actually is if you look at the numbers floating up a lot. At least for me, seeing 5 20s float up doesn't feel as powerful as seeing a 100 even if they are numerically equal. DB has lots of (very quick) DoTs making up it's attacks, while the individual numbers may not be huge I've found they add up to be a good total damage.

As an added bonus, while it may not be top tier DB adds a decent amount of mitigation through KD once you get up in levels. Although you may come to hate that fact if you fight green conning enemies or psychic clockwork

Despite having an empath since release (well, about a week after release, couldn't get the game right away) I don't really have any horrible stories. Well, none that aren't self inflicted. I may have bought into the "you need to focus on healing" thing at first. Then I tried to drop a DE herder with one unslotted blast while it was dropping a tree of life. Still took a bit longer ebfore I got as blast happy as I am now, but thats when I stopped completely ignoring them. I will say that I try to pass along the love if I can. Got a "nice heals" once with a dark and a FF on the team. My response was basically "Heals? I'm blasting. Thanks you two!" Granted, I don't PuG near as much as I used to, I should get back in to that, it's fun to have a workout once in a while

Disclaimer: Some PuGs are, in fact, made of awesome. Back when I was still leveling a couple PuGs became recurring groups. Others will tax you to your limits to keep them going.

From experience, while psy may not make you solo any FASTER then you were already, mass hypnosis lets you do so in near perfect safety. Just double checked, with 2 acc 2 rech 2 sleep (lv 50 generic IOs) it's perma. I believe my empath did it with SOs+1 acc/mez hami originally. Basically the safe method of soloing became sleep everything, wake them up one at a time with dominate (tesla cage would work too, but I was emp/dark) and single target blast the held guys.

Soloing I don't think power does that much for me, when teaming it's hard to beat a PBU+fort though.

No experience with the other sets so I'll leave discussion of those to the better qualified :P

For empathy you want recharge, recharge, and some more recharge, it's all about getting those power buffs back as fast as possible. +Heal certainly can't hurt, but I wouldn't sacrifice recharge to get it.

That being said, if you're playing a pure empath I'd probly say ditch stamina. I know on my empath it's blasting that burns most of my end bar (admittedly he doesn't have leadership) and even with throwing out frequent attacks he has no issues w/o stamina. With recovery aura and conserve power you can keep your blue bar up pretty well without fitness. In place of stamina, I'd grab hasten (more recharge) and 2 other powers of your choice. (In keeping with a team support theme, stunning shot and recall friend?)

PS. Keep in mind the rule of 5, keep an eye out for recharge bonuses but it's easy to go over the limit of 5 per magnitude if you aren't careful. Especially on +5% recharge, doctored wounds has it and you can slot it in 5 powers by itself (I personally have it in 4.)

My favorite of the suggestions I've seen was a defiance style buff attached to all attacks. (making up numbers for being nice and round rather then balanced) Every defender power (primary and secondary, but not pool) gives the defender a 10% end discount and a 5% recharge boost for the next 10 seconds, this effect stacks up to 5 times. This is NOT my idea, but unfortunately I don't remember who posted it.

I feel this is about as close as you can get to benefiting all defenders equally, and quite honestly I think a power boost effect (the suggestion I see the most) would be a little too gamebreaking. The buff/debuff values are pretty high as is (some defenders can cap attributes by themselves after all,) and as much as I would love our buff/debuff to stand out more I don't think a sliding powerboost effect is the way to do it. Having them available more often (accomplished by the above) seems a better method to me.

It's not THAT bad doing lethal damage. It's similar (in my experience) to neg energy. Most of the time you won't really notice it, the resists aren't too bad. Sure it may take an extra hit, but it's not bad. Then you fight a robot (zombie for neg) and you realize you're doing half damage. As long as you can avoid the handful of enemies with stupid high res, you'll be fine.

And yes I know numerically Neg is better off then lethal, but as far as the feel goes it's been similar.

As others have said, there aren't really any stinkers in AR, and I would hesitate to call it a weak set. I've got an AR/EM (currently lv 37)who just levels spawns, even before boost range came in to play.

Only power I skipped was the snipe (I figured since I was getting boost range eventually I didn't need a super-long range attack, and I was running out of power picks.)

Ignite is powerful, but situational enough I could see skipping it. I mostly use it when teamed with a controller (EM lacks the immob to keep things in it's patch) or on AVs who won't run out of the patch, or as a defense power. Drop it at your feet and enemies will run out of melee range for a minute.

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As I see it (and I realize it's not always relevant) HOs are about conserving slots. 3 membranes gives my empath's fortitude full enhancement in both aspects I care about and as a bonus enhances a third aspect as well. My grav controller's singularity doesn't have to choose between being a good mezzer or good (for a sing) damager, and can again do it in only 3 slots. While I could max def and rech on fort or dam and mez in sing with IO sets, it would take more then 3 to pull off, and If I'm trying to do it in as few slots as possible I'm probably missing the set bonus advantage IOs get anyway.

So basically IOs are about getting bonuses for your character, HOs are about lessening the strain of slot allocation. The two can complement eachother well, with HOs freeing up slots to get more set bonuses from some other power.

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Didn't the accuracy and recharge penalties on all the AoE holds have something to do with all the "City of Statues" complaints from launch?

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No, the accuracy penalties were always present. Well, except for Wormhole and maybe EM Pulse. They dont have them. IIRC.

Lewis

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Wormhole was originally single target, I suspect they forgot to add the acc penalty when they made it AoE. (and I assumed they had, I didn't know it was full acc until you mentioned it. Yay learning!) As for EMPulse...it's a tier 9? Tier 9s are usually a bit above the standard power.

That aside, I think the acc penalties are fine for the AoE stuns/holds. True blaster AoE's don't have the penalties, but blaster AoEs don't neutralize most of the spawn in one shot either (except for nukes, but they have their own set of penalties.) Just put two acc SOs in it (not a huge loss with ED) and you're good. I could see getting rid of the penalty on immobs, although they do have a lesser penalty then the hard controls already.

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How do we feel about Absorb Pain dealing more penalty damage to defenders than to controllers?

For comparison, the penalty damage on Energy Transfer was adjusted to account for stalkers having a higher damage multiplier: 3.00 self-damage to stalkers, 3.75 self-damage to tankers, so after AT multipliers they're exactly the same self-damage for both ATs after level 20.

Defenders have a higher damage multiplier than controllers, so Absorb Pain's self-damage would have to be reduced from 3.00 to about 2.54 to equalize the damage in the same way as Energy Transfer.

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Honestly for me personally, it's a non-issue. Or rather, it's such a minor issue that unless it only takes 5 minutes of work I don't feel it's worth taking time from other problems. The damage from AP is minor enough that it's not a huge concern, the -heal and -regen debuffs have far more impact then the self damage, and I believe the two versions are penalized equally there. Then you add in that regen aura allows you to work around the penalties and is found in the same set.

Couple things, keeping people alive can be done in more then one way. Even sticking with the "no damage" thing, dark blast has an AoE stun. As an added bonus said stun can take the stupefy set (which as I recall isn't terribly expensive, but it's been a while) for a 6.25% recharge bonus. Yes it's minion only, but the majority of enemies are minions and knocking them out of the fight cuts down on incoming damage significantly.

On a related note, Tenbrous Tentacles is a decent immob. While it won't stop as much damage as a stun, most enemies are less dangerous at range then melee. Plus, you can stack this onto bosses faily easily. And again, theres the Enfeebled Operation set which I suspect is dirt cheap and has a 3.75% recharge bonus.

And also, fortitude is your BEST power for keeping others alive. I want to restate that it's worth losing a global recharge bonus (although I don't think you have to) to max it's personal recharge (losing 5% recharge on non-fort powers to gain 90% on fort seems like a good deal to me.) While it won't be terribly cheap, if you can get your hands on 3 Cytoskeleton Exposure hamis you can max all the relevant aspects of fortitude, so 4 slotting it can bring it to its full potential plus have space for a LotG +Rech IO.

And finally, I didn't really look at your sets the first time other then to notice general trends, I didn't count them and notice you going over the mentioned rule of 5. You're definately going to want to play with your sets to make sure you don't have more then 5 of the same % recharge bonus.

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1) Get Fortitude six-slotted. The most basic slotting is 3 recharge, 3 def so you can keep it up on 4 people that way.


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So very much agreed, it is well worth losing a global recharge bonus or two to get Fort enhanced for recharge.

I'd also recommend the endmod in AB he mentioned, but it's not as important as fortitude's availability.

More specifically, while I think many of your abilities are overslotted I understand most of them are going for recharge boosting set bonuses, but here are some places where you can free up slots without losing the bonuses.

Clear Mind: Stick a recharge in the base slot and be done with it, you can easily cover a whole team or stack enough to protect from GW without the extra slots. The base slot doesn't even need to be recharge to do this.

Ressurect: While you technically aren't hurting anything by having the extra recharge (it's not nigh unnoticeable like CM,) I feel it is quite frankly overkill, especially with the massive recharge bonuses your build has.

Freeing up two slots from each will let you add your recharge to fortitude with an extra slot left over, I'd recommend putting it in PBU, combining that with fortitude is game breaking good.

Moonbeam: Not so much a slot change here as a suggestion. You may want to switch this to gloom. It's a much more combat usable blast and you can keep the set.

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...I don't get the concept of absorbed with MOG and the archmage accolade...

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I'm pretty sure absorb is supposed to represent absorbing enemy fire, or taking the hits but with enough defense that they don't actually DO anything when they hit. In MoG's case it's probably healing the injury away before it has time to register, the accolades are all magicy so you can say they work however you want.

My emp/dark used to tank for teams back when he had provoke. Before IOs :P I miss it, I think I may try to make his alternate build into a tank again. Completely agree with Felecia_Divine, you can tank with most anything if you try. It is of course easier for some powersets then others.

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...(good stuff went here)...
Water Spout is Tornado from the Storm Summoning set...

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Basically true but with a couple differences.
A-The big one: It does knockup instead of knockback. It's still great for chaos but it won't scatter the enemies nearly as much as storm's tornado.
B-And this is just my opinion: It looks a lot cooler :P

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Vigilence needs to be retweaked and I think correctly this thread has stated that soloing is very hard for many (not all) defenders.

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I must admit this particular complaint always leaves me bemused. The AT is advertised from the beginning as a team support AT yet I keep seeing people complain that not all variants can solo well.

I keep getting the impression that what people are thinking but are not quite willing to say is that they want blaster damage and defender abilities. Thats not likely to happen any time soon. In the mean time you can always go and play a corrupter. Soon you'll even be able to bring them hero side.

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To be fair, controllers are even more team support based then defenders and as a rule solo better.

That said, I'd like to know what the "baseline" solo capability we should be capable of is. I know my moderately IOd (for recharge) Emp/Dark/Power can solo missions as long as there isn't an EB in them. If theres an EB it depends, some he can take, some not so much. Sure he's not the fastest soloer around but it doesn't feel that bad to me.

One of the above posters said that gauntlet scales by level and I suspect they are right. By time I've hit mid/high level both my tanks (stone/stone and ice/db) have had no problems holding aggro and both of them very rarely use taunt. Taunt it the "I want that guy way over there to hit me" button, anything in melee is kept on me by attacks. This is without slotting for taunt, and while I run the auras only icicles is heavily slotted (as a damage power.) Other tankers using taunt can of course pull targets off me, but if they are firing taunt chances are they don't care about taking hits, so I'm not worried about them.

Also, I believe I remember it being said that the radius is different depending on the attack. The basic attacks are pretty much "taunt the guy and anyone touching him" while the heavier hitters go out a bit further. Regardless, holding aggro gets much easier when you get your aggro aura, which I suspect does more than gauntlet ever will for you. Although looking at the numbers it seems to use the same mechanic as gauntlet, it just happens much faster and with less effort.

I believe another thing they like about LR is that it doesn't break hide, iirc technically its a psuedopet doing the damage and not you.

I have no experience playing an elec stalker but having seen one in action (elec/EA/Mu) I'll say they can be pretty beastly. I love my DM(/EA/Lev) stalker more then I thought I would and he is quite capable as well. I'd hesitate to say one is inherently superior to the other, but I would definately say that they excel at different things.

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I find myself direly amused by the idea that you get a powerboost-style buff that can only be sustained by attacking. Higher-tier attacks would sustain it longer.

It is a ridiculous idea, but it still amuses me.

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Yeah it's a neat idea but buff/debuff effects are so over the top already that I don't think it's ever going to happen. That plus it would mean that long duration click buffs would have to be cast while your power build up effect was high to maximize their effect while short duration/instant clicks or toggles could just be used whenever. I really liked that defiance style +rech/-end cost idea posted earlier. It doesn't help all primaries the same (I'm looking at you forcefield) but at least it would also let you blast faster/easier. And the defender buffs reliably coming back faster would help differentiate them more from controller buffs.

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Could be mistaken, but I seem to recall that it was Immobilizes, not Slows, that were once known as Snares... for some reason I have that in my brain. Are you sure it was slows?

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You were mistaken. See, for example, http://eu.cityofheroes.com/en/game_g.../enhancements/ . Last time I looked, some of the invention recipes that enhance slow powers were call "snare". Admittedly, I haven't checked this recently, so it could have been changed a couple issues ago and I wouldn't have noticed.

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I think (and I'll admit this is off the top of my head, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that there are a couple reasons for the snare confusion.

A) First, it's inconsistent in it's use. The terms snare and slow seem to be interchangeable partly because...

B) Slow as a term tends to apply to two debuffs that while similar in theme are mechanically different. Snares reduce MOVEMENT speed while slows reduce RECHARGE speed. The two effects very often come packaged together (for obvious thematic reasons) making the distinction somewhat fuzzy. It's much easier to say a power slows it's target then to say it slows and snares, especially when they tend to slow both attributes by the same value. The two effects DO have different icons. Slow has rings around the ubber body (like how stun has a band around the upper body) in it's icon while snare has rings around the feet (like immobilize has a band there.)

An example of a slow power that is purely a snare would be quicksand, I can't think of any that are purely slows offhand. (By purely slow I mean it only has one of the two slow effects, quicksand does more then just snare :P)

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Please name one thing that the defender brings to the table that is not better brought by controllers?

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The actual buffs, debuffs, and heals from the Defender primary? Controllers have support scalars of .75 whereas Defenders have a 1.0. A */ff controller with maneuvers will only be able to provide 33.345% +def. A ff/* defender with maneuvers will provide 44.46% +def. The difference between an FF troller and an FF fender is the difference between taking 33.31% of incoming damage and taking 11.08% of incoming damage. Defenders support better than Controllers.

Please try to actually learn the numbers before you make claims.

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Except only some of those support scalars are .75, actually MOST aren't. Heals for instance are at 88%. Recovery buffs are at 100%. Only defense and resistance buffs seem to follow the controller buff = 75% of a defender buff rule.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...Number=4996435

It's old but if you go towards the bottom of the page and look at the revised list I believe all the numbers are still the same.