Fury Flechette

They're overrated.

The "best" character is the one you find the most fun. And the people who turn down a kin controller of any type aren't people you'd want to team with anyway.

1. No.
2. If teaming is an issue for you, you have until the end of the month to move servers.

I also have to agree with PP on this issue. They're vulnerable and while a modest marketing page won't outright kill them, it will hurt. It's very little effort for potentially a sizeable increase in players. At this point, even the ardent fanboys over there are wavering. The situation over there looks like Hellgate: London part 2.

Watch the E3 CoV trailer

It will all make sense after that.

Haha lmao

Defense is better. You're correct in that regen, while helpful, is better with ATs with more hitpoints.

Untrue. A quick look at my posting history will show otherwise. As for Harkness...not really worth a response. Pretty spiteful for a poster who I'm fairly sure I've helped with a couple of builds already.

I pretty much agree with this. If inventions was introduced at the same time with ED, I think the overall perception would be a lot different. And the way the whole thing was communicated was a text book case of what you don't do.

While I like inventions quite a bit, I know lots of players who find them incredibly complicated (or not worth the bother) and hence don't bother with them. To them, even with the advent of inventions, their characters are considerably weaker than before, since they don't use set IOs. Many of these players turn to generic IOs, which in their mind are just stronger SOs that don't expire. However then, they have to deal with the Market which leaves a rather bad taste in their mouths.

Please note that I'm not talking about myself. I'm quite adept IMO at using IOs and the Market; however, I do have a lot of sympathy for players who dislike the complications ED, Inventions and the Market has brought to the game. Players used to brag that CoH was almost a gear-free MMO. You really can't say that now.

This is what I do. I go to Atlas Park (or Cap Au Diable if you're a baddie) and just ask. I state my intentions clearly:

"Greetings Atlas Park (or Cap Au Diable), I need a volunteer to help me invite an alt for a 1-person SG. It will only take 2 mins of your time, and I will pay 300k for your time."

You'll get a string of tells and response pretty quickly. You invite the stranger to your SG, promote them some ranks if wanted, and tell them you'll send them a tell from your alt. You log onto your alt and then tell them to type /sgi {name of alt} and have them promote you some ranks.

After your alt is invited, you logon back to your SG leader character and then pay them. You then ask them to quit your SG (or you can kick them).

Some precautions to take.
1. Disable base entry priviledges to all but the rank of your SG leader character.
2. Make sure only your leader can edit SG rank privileges.
3. (Paranoid step) Go into every bin and change permissions so only the SG leader can withdraw from the bins.

This precaution ensures you don't get someone who'll loot you while you're logging on/off different characters. I've never had a problem with theft actually, but it's always a good idea to be cautious. After your alt is invited, make sure you change the permissions back so your lowbie character can access the base and the bins.

The going rate for doing this varies, but I tend to err on the side of generosity since it (at least in my mind) discourages potential theft/griefing since they'll get a good reward if they just do what they're supposed to do. I've paid upwards of 1M when I asked someone to invite 4 characters. 1M is actually quite a bargain since every character you invite nets you 20k prestige. 20k prestige costs 10M inf if you were changing inf to prestige.

People in your coalitions / teaming channels will often do this for free, and it's not a bad idea to ask someone on your server via the forums. Forumites are actually the least likely to cheat you since if they're well known, you can rat them out.

All the non-Engineer/healing minions will throw spears at you that will debuff defense. It's probably the most common way that defense based characters start suffering cascading defense failure. I can attest to the fact that Laev runs the ITF frequently, and is very well aware of what the Cimerorans can do.

Not having good ranged defense would not be a good idea. Ideally, you want both good ranged and AoE, but if I had to choose one, I'd choose to buff range.

Have you tried to buy level 33 IOs recently? I'm guessing you haven't. Some of the highly desired sets are as rare as hen's teeth at the mid levels.

Try buying a level 35 Obliteration piece. It's rather hard even if influence is no issue. Even level 35 Thunderstrikes are hard to come by.

It's why a bunch of marketeers have formed a SG to try to supply some of these IOs back into the market; however, our contribution seems like a drop of water added into a desert. Every recipe, IO have sold fast.

I'm not saying that your suggestion is bad, but that due to current market conditions, it's not as feasible as it once was.

In my case, I have screech, which I've stated in a subsequent post, makes pet gaze redundant for my build.

I've been here since 2004. Dark Miasma was a set available at 2004. Some of the Dark Defenders that people talk about are literally five years old. The reason why there may not as many of them is because it's five years old. People play other ATs and other combinations.

And for your information, my toon is lovely. And I'll ignore any post if I simply don't feel it warrants any response or if I just feel like it. The other people ignored your post for the same reason. We're not under any obligation to respond to any post, let alone yours.

Mac Pack. The Valkyrie armor pieces are win and surprisingly versatile. The mission teleporter is the third best nice-to-have in the boosters apart from ninja running and the mystic fortune power.

Your best bet is to get a helpful level 50 and duo a series of Ouro missions that contain an AV. Yes, the drop will be random, but some missions contain up to 2 AVs. Drop the 2 AVs, collect the random SO drop, slot if useful and then repeat.

I'm going to ratchet this discussion down a bit because I want to make clear I don't want to see this devolve into personal attacks. I have opinions about dark/dark and you have contrary ones and much of the different perspective may come down to play style

With that said, my rebuttal:

Sonic is a mixture of smashing *and* energy damage. And the -res effect pretty much ensures high damage against just about anything. I don't worry about resistances to damage type on a sonic blast toon because it just isn't much of a factor after a few blasts.

Sonic blast also has aim which increases the gap between the two blast types. I haven't taken a dark blast character against 40+ mobs, so I don't have personal knowledge about what it can do, but I think you very much overestimate the effect of enemy resistances as a contributor to the weakness of the sonic set, especially since it's a mixed damage type set and not completely all smashing damage.

Tar patch keeps stuff on there long enough for me to kill them. If you have to use a power to hold them there before they're all killed, I submit you may not be doing enough damage. My dark/sonic doesn't need TT, and if I have to keep something in place (I've never had the need), I'll just put them all to sleep with Siren's Song. In groups, once tar patch is set, a blaster's AoE will have all the mobs killed anyways.

Dark pit has a 60 base second recharge. Screech has a 20 base second recharge...if your theoretical build has enough recharge to spam dark pit, it can stack shriek on multiple targets in the same amount of time. I'm not sure why you'd even bother using dark pit since howling twilight in your primary does practically the same thing, is more effective and easier to use since it's a targeted range power. Further, the best AoE mez a dark defender has is Fearsome Stare, which again makes something like Dark Pit mostly redundant except in situations where you run into fear resistant foes (FS still debuffs them).

Dark blast and gloom doesn't do close to the damage of shriek and scream, especially if you factor in the massive -20% res effect for defenders, and the tohit debuffs are completely unnecessary. Why bother with spamming tose attacks when you can just simply use darkest night which has an enhancead tohit debuff of around 30% and then use any blast you want. Throw in self +dmg buffs like aim and the gulf becomes even wider.

I'm well versed with lining up cones, and I believe that Nightfall has the same approximate arc as Full Auto. Both require a moderate amount of positioning. However because the cone size is radically different than TT, I find that it becomes a hassle to use. If you're okay with this, then you're more tolerant.

Hey we agree on something!

I can get just as close to a boss with my dark/sonic as you can with your dark/dark. IOs can easily bridge any gaps that's left with darkest night. It doesn't even need to be heavily IO'ed since darkest night (enhanced to -29% tohit debuff with just SOs), manuevers + shadowfall (around 13% defense fully enhanced with just SOs) is effectively 3% shy of the soft cap. Throw in a Steadfast Res/Def IO and hey look, I'm a "tank" at the soft cap. What you can do with your build isn't anything that other dark miasma defender of any secondary couldn't do.

Don't even have it any dark miasma build. Completely redundant power that's made pretty worthless since you already have fearsome stare. And specifically on my sonic blast build, it's completely inferior to shriek. At best, it's a power pick for a set mule. IMO there are so many better choices you can make. I think Pet Gaze is the second worst Dark Miasma power after Black Hole.

It's a defender nuke. Let's leave it at that.

That could be a play style issue. Maybe sonic blast just doesn't jive with how you like to play. I like damage, and make no apologies for it. Dark Miasma is already chock full of utilities that a blast set which has yet more utilities and poor (IMO) damage has no appeal for me.

I have zero endurance issues on my dark/sonic. I had far less as soon as I frankenslotted my blasts which were where most of the endurance was consumed. My dark/sonic is not heavily IOed and use a mixtures of IOs and SOs. She does fine with that set up.

As for taking alphas: toggle on shadowfall, toggle on darkest night, apply tar patch, heal (rarely) if alpha counter attack is harder than expected. Which is pretty much the same as any other dark miasma defender and not special to dark/dark.

I don't have shockwave and have howl and my single target blasts. It's plenty and I can get by solo even at higher number difficulties just fine.

Why? IOs are part of the game. If you don't want to take advantage of it that's fine, but don't dismiss a perspective of a player who can do what you can and more with those slotted.

And in my example above I mainly stress the use of pool powers (manuevers), power choices (shadowfall, darkest night) and the use of 1 (*one) IO.

Frankly, with IOs, I think a dark/sonic build would pull further ahead because building for defense reduces the need of the dark blast tohit debuff effects even more.

Cold/Dark Defender to 31; Dark/Rad Corruptor to 26. I've played it enough.

EDIT: Dark/Sonic Blast Defender to 50 and multiple other Dark Miasma characters.

EDIT2: I forgot I had a pre-ED Dark/Dark Defender on Guardian. Level 25. However, I don't consider this valid since I haven't touched the character for 1000+ days.