GuyPerfect

In other news, I'm very pleased with Soul Mastery and am proud to say that this character will never be going back to Arctic.

If you love Dark Armor, you probably know all about it, but I'll still post some tips for anyone browsing the thread.

Dark Armor has considerable resistances to everything, though Smashing and Lethal will be less than 50% unless you take Tough. Even so, you're going to take a lot of hits (by design) and you'll need a way to stay alive. Your primary source of longevity comes from Dark Regeneration, which is a PBAoE self heal that gives you 30% of your Hit Points per target un-slotted.

The main problem with Dark Regeneration, however, is its 33.8 Endurance cost, which is more than a third of your Endurance bar. Without careful slotting, you'll be able to cast it 3 times as long as you're not doing anything else. Fortunately, there's an Enhancement that as far as I can tell was created with just this power in mind: Theft of Essence: Chance for +Endurance. This is an Accurate Healing Enhancement that gives a 20% chance for +10 Endurance for every enemy it hits.

If you get Dark Regeneration slotted for Endurance Reduction to around 18 Endurance, and put that Theft of Essence in there, then hit the 10 max targets with the power every time, you're likely to have the proc activate 10 / 5 = 2 times, which will recover 20 Endurance: more than paying for casting the power itself... on average.

As a Tanker, you'll need to be careful with Dark Armor because your role is to take aggro onto yourself and not to dispatch the enemy. While on a Scrapper it will keep them alive long enough to defeat everything, on a Tanker you're relying on it to keep you alive. Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom will work wonders in most situations, but you'll still want to pick a secondary set that will mitigate damage more than dish it out.

Battle Axe and Ice Melee tend to be the winners here. In particular, Ice Patch knocks everything off its feet, including bosses, so it's one of the best powers to combine with Oppressive Gloom. Frozen Aura gives as much damage as Foot Stomp, and it's Cold rather than Smashing, so it's less resisted to boot.

You'll be able to use whichever secondary you want if you've got good team support, but if you're going for sheer effectiveness, I'd recommend Battle Axe or Ice Melee.

Moreso than wondering when a particular character was created (mine usually coincide with Issue releases), I'm often curious to know when the character achieved level 50.

Siphon Power != Power Siphon. If Siphon Power could accept set IOs, I'm sure putting a damage proc in it would have a chance to affect the enemy it hits. (-:

The Super Freak is an Elite Boss empowered by a shard of Merulina's coral. I think you mean Super Stunner, which is the new Freakshow boss.

My computer's a black rectangle.

There is no need to continue to entertain yourself with these delusions, young one.

Should I ask, "What makes Emperor Cole a tyrant," you will respond "For he is a tyrant." You have no message, and you've subscribed to a particular belief without any semblance of reason. You are no better than the traitorous scoundrels who lurk in the sewers beneath us. If you would like to be taken seriously, you may wish to employ an amount of intellect to accompany your claims.

Not that it will matter, of course, for your crushing defeat at the hands of my Emperor lingers on the horizon, but perhaps you can make more effective use of what time you still have available to you.

*Views public profile*

Ah, yes. There it is!

Way back in Issue 12, I rolled a Dark Armor/Ice Melee Tanker. People called me crazy, saying it was a totally wacky combination, but nowadays people seem to think it's the bee's knees. I guess some unforseen region of my id knew what it was doing when it picked those powersets for me. The build was a late bloomer, but that's what happens when you don't get very many attacks until level 38, so it wasn't something I was unprepared for. When I got to 41, though, I had to make a decision.

See, when I do my character builds, I like to stick with some semblance of consistency. The primary/secondary combinations can be whatever I can imagine, but when I put in the epic set, I'm gonna want it to do the function of one set using the theme of the other. In this case, I had Dark for protection and Ice for offense. Since Tanker epics don't give yet more protection, that left me with the desire for a Dark-themed offensive epic set.

Distraught was I, for Tanker had no Dark-themed epic sets, so I settled on Arctic Mastery instead. I figured I could at least take a character-themed offensive set, and add in some more attacks from the Ice genre, but it never felt right. It just felt like an extension of Ice Melee, and I didn't feel the variety was there, so I pouted. I did make good use of the ranged hold, however, which stacked great with the melee hold. Ice Blast and Ice Storm were kinda yawn-worthy, but they beat out Chilblain and, once Issue 13 came around, Shiver.

And then they announced Going Rogue, and the ability to switch sides. Of course one of my first thoughts was grabbing Soul Mastery on my Tanker, what with it being a Dark-themed offensive epic set and all. And now that Going Rogue has been released, I finally got around to moving my Tanker over, completing the patron arc, and respecing out of Arctic Mastery altogether.

I'm an avid frankenslotter, and that Tanker was one of the first characters I did, so my knack for selecting Enhancements has improved since that time. Although I kept all the same powers up through the level 38 selection, I ended up gutting the build and peeling off 20 set IOs and a dozen or so common IOs during the revision process. I had to burn a respec to keep all the Enhancements around for other characters, but since I got one free with my purchase of the Spider's Kiss and had the Going Rogue freespec in tow, it wasn't a big deal.

---

The result, now that it's all said and done? It is awesome. Part of this is that I've never selected Soul Mastery on any of my characters in the past, despite having multiple Villain 50s and four years of gameplay under my belt. So a part of it is the awe factor, and the other part of it is the "aw yeah" factor. It really does feel like this is what the character should have been all along. It also isn't slotted suckily with heavy Endurance usage and a focus on damage for some oddball reason, but I'm gonna give all the credit to Soul Mastery anyway.

Ice Blast became Gloom, a single-target, ranged attack. While the former was just hurling a snowball at the enemy, the latter is a surprisingly high-damage DoT that caught me off guard.

Ice Storm became Dark Obliteration, an area effect attack. Ice Storm is a location summon that does a fair amount of damage to anything that didn't bring an umbrella, but its recharge is so long that it's just not very practical. What's the DPS on an attack like that? Dark Obliteration is a ranged targeted AoE, though, with much faster recharge and essentially covers the same damage area. Damage from the epic set took a big leap with this one.

Lastly, Block of Ice (single-target ranged hold) became Darkest Night (targeted AoE debuff toggle). I was a bit sad to see the ranged hold go, but what I got in its place is arguably better mitigation overall. The damge and ToHit debuffs, stacked with the ToHit debuffs from the prior two attacks, make me harder to hit and harder to hurt.

I did not take Soul Tentacles, though I considered it. Between Ice Patch, Oppressive Gloom and Dark Regeneration, I reasoned that I'd be much better off in the middle of a big group rather than in front of it, and a cone attack would therefore only affect a little wedge of the available targets. So I went with the sphere AoEs instead.

Then something unexpected happened; something I've never had to deal with before. After I had all my powers fully slotted exactly the way I wanted them, I had two slots leftover and no idea what do do with them. I usually have other powers that could stand to be a little more powerful, so those get any extra slots I might have, but this time, I was just drawing a blank. I put one in Greater Ice Sword for more recharge (it's only 10s base, but why not?), then the other turned into a -Recharge proc in Darkest Night. There, problem solved.

Next, I took it out for a spin. I could handle x8 aggro well enough with the crappily-slotted Arctic Mastery build, so I figure +1x8 with bosses should do juuust fine on the new build. Of course half the enemies on the map were +2. They did make me use Soul Transfer once, but that was because I felt like using Dark Obliteration when I should have used Dark Regeneration. All-in-all, despite fighting +1x8 solo, the enemy didn't stand much of a chance.

---

I guess this counts as my longest-running character, then, as far as development is concerned. It started in Issue 12, just after Dark Armor became available to Tanker, and finished in Issue 18 when Soul Mastery did the same.

Add this to the list of Going Rogue success stories. (-:

Jack Frost is the only control pet I've had the bittersweet opportunity of summoning personally, but he's definitely begun to grow on me.

First time I summoned him, I saw that he had more hit points than I (Dominator), and the damage he was capable of dealing with his attacks were on par with my own, as I essentially had the same attacks. To me, that spelled out a sweet source of secondary aggro. In practice, it's a sweet source of secondary aggro.

And then I noticed you could slot him for Hold. Sweet, sweet hold.

Jack has a habit of blasting anything within targeting range, but since Ice/Icy is so control-heavy to begin with, it's not usually a problem. It's just from time to time I say to myself, "Well, Jack says it's time to go, so it's time to go!"

Jack's Chilling Embrace, plus my Chilling Embrace... and Arctic Air... and Shiver... and my ten -Recharge procs strewn throughout various powers in the build... Fights against large spawns eventually boil down to them standing there staring at me while I hit them; unable to fight back and unable to run away.

And his damage, it's better than I expected. It's not uncommon for me to cast Ice Slick and Shiver and Sleet and Frost Breath and whatever else before moving in for the kill against big groups, only to find that many of the enemies are nearly dead to begin with thanks to Jack running around poking them.

There's also the whole matter of Domination + Power Boost + Glacier + Sleet combo, but this is a thread about the pets, so I won't get into that.

*Raises glass* Here's to you, Jack Frost, you crazy aggressive starved-for-attention animated ice cube, you!

Well here's something you don't see every day. An actual, for-real, not-artificial mission inside the Mission Architect:

(Click for full-size image)


The moral of the story? Don't let anyone ever tell you it's impossible to farm purples in AE. (-:

Aaactually, if I was on the list of reservations, take me off. Not up for it tonight. (-: