Fulmens

Should I answer your complaint or the question you asked?

For "the question you asked" Rad/Sonic defenders work exceptionally well. So do FF/anything defenders, with extra leisure in that you basically WORK for 45 seconds every 3-4 minutes and then spend your time essentially plinking what are normally considered serious threats. You do have to watch your aggro a little if you're an SO'd out FF defender, because everyone on the team is a tank except you.

For "the lack of wealth and shinies"- blah blah blah I make hundreds of millions while I sleep on the market and so can you blah. Blah blah frankenslotting for ten million gives you two free slots per power blah. Blah blah Frankenslotting guide in sig blah.

My last duo with my wife that went really well was a rad/sonic defender and a MA/SR scrapper (could be any scrapper, though.)

This person claims some expertise, or at least has a VERY authoritative font.

I like "an opulence of succubi" and will endeavor to find some use for it in everyday speech.

I wonder if it also applies to their downmarket sistren?

I've never been a fan of Rain of Fire.

Shiver drops both RunSpeed and Recharge. (RoF is -Runspeed only, so once they get out of the rain everything's recharged...)

Shiver can self-stack, has a very long duration, and can drop tough targets' recharge and move speed WAY down.

I've never been all that impressed with Rain of Fire's damage, considering how long you have to survive/wait around for it to do its job, and considering that you can drop even to +2 minions with just fireball/firebreath.

I may someday get Rain of Fire and Shiver on the same character, and fall in love with the combo. (I haven't yet.) At the moment if it's either/or, I choose Shiver.

If you want "never miss" attacks, Champions Online has them. And look how popular they are!

... sorry, cheap shot at a target that's already down.

The original post distorts the situation in at least three different ways:
1) "Unenhanced damage" is half damage. Not counting BU/Aim.
2) Arachnos are tougher opponents than nearly anything else heroes face in the 32+ game. If I complained about the performance of my powers, and used Rularuu in example, wouldn't you laugh too?
3) "Can miss completely" is relevant, but fairly rare. Shooting 16 guys and missing 3+, assuming capped to-hit, is about a 3.5% chance if my math is right (and it sometimes is.)

I like having nukes that can erase one spawn every 3-5 fights. Some people prefer "nukes" that hit hard every fight or two, but aren't fightstoppers. Pick your powerset, pick your nuke.

Just sent you a tell (from @Boltcutter), unless you're not @Bionic Flea .

If it was for me: I'd shotgun out a whole lot of AE bronze rolls for the Acc/Dam (I presume 35-39 but I've been wrong before.) The hard part here is going to be figuring out which of the non-Kinetic Combat are worth selling and which you just delete as you roll 'em. [1] You might get one or so Dam/End out of the deal as well ("rare" pool A.) Damage/Recharge you probably can buy for not TOO horrible a price. They're door drops, so traditionally they're relatively oversupplied.

That leaves the Dam/End and the Dam/End/Rech. It might be worth bidding on Dam/End at level 30 as well as 35- things like zombie apocalypses and Rikti invasions produce level 30 Pool A's as hundreds and thousands of badguys appear and are slaughtered. [2] I don't have a good way to get Dam/End by playing.

As far as the Dam/End/Rech ... I don't know. I think the best way is probably random merit or Gold rolls at 35. On average by the time you get one Dam/End/Rech you will also have gotten at least half of this list: Miracle +Rech, Impervium Resistance, Numina +Reg/+Rech, and Luck of the Gambler Global Rech . (Is the Obliteration quad still hugely expensive? Half chance of one of them. ) So I'd think that after twenty rolls or less you could afford the Kinetic Combats. Still, random roll is random. [3] I've seen someone roll 12 stinkers in a row. I personally try to do two rolls at a time for psychological reasons- much more likely to have ONE good thing per rolling session, which keeps me from getting too discouraged.

Best way to get Merits or Gold rolls? I dunno, these days. Mix it up so you don't get insanely bored. Two Lord of Winter runs is a roll. Task Force Commander is 5% more HP and 14 rolls if you do the whole thing. Dr. Q is six rolls... although I wouldn't do that again. Freaklympics flashback arc is nearly 2 rolls all by itself.

I have a character on Pinn who might be available for TF's depending on your timing.

[1] If it is a snipe, or any sort of mez or slow, throw it out immediately. Anything melee, ranged, AOE, Heal, Defense or Resist you should check.
[2] I'm assuming you've made 50-300 million on your unloved bronze rolls. Always make sure to check the crafted price and sales history as well as uncrafted- if you can wait a couple days for the sale, you can often make an extra 5 million inf.
[3] Copyright Ego's Shadow, 2008

The funny thing about all this is, building a Force Fielder is already REALLY close to getting powerlevelled for me... send tell to 3 blasters on teams, if I don't get an invite play something else.

Once on the team, spend 75% of my time just watching my team win...

For the buck? The generics.

For the SLOT? I dunno.

This is going to sound like a rude question: Do you keep your force fields on ALL your teammates ALL the time?

If so, you can invite pretty much any blaster or blasters to your team, and can nearly invite YOURSELF to any team with a blaster on it.

If not, you should probably not be playing a Force Fielder. Try something where you won't hate a very important part of your character.

It is my experience that a lot of people will keep attacking the Lord of Winter even if you've told everyone at the start "Guardian makes him invulnerable" and told people when it comes up, "Everyone attack the Guardian!"

I've been doing this on characters with either Sonic blasts, Sonic shields, or Rad, so there's been a decent damage multiplier going and/or good -Regen. I think that's the key, because you have to be able to take down a giant monster in about 3 minutes to do the Lord of Winter. Two teams should work, IF they've got good "AV killer" characters. I wish there was something I could say other than bring rad, dark, sonic or six extra characters...

You might want to consider a Kin as a chance to do something different than you normally do. A nice change, as it were.

FIRST: Kinetics is the "Anti-defender"- almost nothing it does actually DEFENDS the team, except in the way that nuclear weapons defended America in the cold war. Which is to say: overwhelming damage. Kin on a team, seems like you have two choices: play relatively safe and let the melee characters have the spotlight, as you turn them into combat monsters, or take your own crack. The #1 cause of Kin death is running in to try and take full advantage of Fulcrum Shift, as far as I know.

I don't, myself, play Kin so I'm going out on a limb here, but it seems like you're going to have to make an important judgement call: Are the other defenders and controllers on the team skilled, and willing to keep you alive, or are they being played by monkies or 8-year-olds or something? I'm not going to say you're WRONG to run into melee range underdefended- I play way too many short range Blasters- but if you do, it's gonna be a short fight one way or the other, so make sure you're ready to hit really hard really fast.

Recipe-L37 Teleport stealth (redside, I think...)

Yesterday almost ALL the mid tech salvage was going for an arm and a leg redside. Starting with circuit boards, which were down to 2 at one point. I cashed in a lot of tickets and did things like put Iron up for 101 thousand and get 2.5 million for five.

Also, in general, there are not that many people "around" in zones. Most of the action in this game happens in instanced missions.

As for the OP's question: I'd buy now, wait a month and sell.

My standard is "10 gets you 8"- you may be able to do better. When are you on?

I'm @Boltcutter in game.

Might make me create a stormie... if only so I can throw STORM OF SWORDS!

this thread needs more bear attacks.

What kinda budget are we talking here?

I can give you some vague info:

SONIC:
Meat & Potatoes powers: Shriek, Howl, Shout. Damage, resdebuff, with high recharge you get a whole attack chain out of those 3.
Sometimes useful to me: Scream [if you have low recharge], Siren's Song (emergency/solo, huge sleep with huge duration), screech (stunning annoying people), Amplify (solo/hitting high defense people), Dreadful Wail (because I take every nuke anyone offers me.)

RAD:
Meat & Potatoes- Enervating Field (95% end red), Accelerate Metab (95% rech reduction), Rad Infection (60% ToHit debuff and 95% End Red, as available)
Good- Lingering Radiation for GM's and AV's, or if you're taking too much damage/just been stunned and had your toggles dropped; Radiant Aura (there's always SOME damage and you may have spare time to heal).
Opinions Vary- Mutation, Fallout, Choking Cloud, EM Pulse. I don't HATE any of these powers, but Choking Cloud is on a very long timer (once per 10 seconds?), Fallout is only useful when someone dies (although it's a lot of damage in a small radius), Mutation is... a rez power... and EM pulse is a non-damage nuke. I like EM pulse a lot and Fallout a little, but these powers probably depend greatly on your playstyle.

Their math is off, yes, but that won't stop them from doing a whole lot of Lording.

We got a few more people into the VG yesterday. It's a slow starter, but I hope it'll get going...

Someone said on Freedom, "10 merits for 5 minutes? Hell yeah."

I don't know how much interest will fade. Someone got several hundred merits last year at 2 per WL ( I bought his rolls. ) People like their goodies.