Jade_Dragon

Well, I must admit that your conclusion that a "Quad Form" isn't really viable, in that Light Form locks you out of the other forms and takes slots away from those forms, is probably quite logical. It is hard enough being a Tri-Form. I can't imagine trying to balance all four of the forms winding up being very powerful in any of them.

Solar Flare, though, is not the same thing as Dwarf Flare. I think that's the problem most people have with it. Dwarf Flare is a meleer's AoE. Solar Flare is a ranged damage dealer's AoE. It's not supposed to keep foes in melee with you, because a Human Form Kheldian is a mix of melee and ranged.

I made the same mistake with Gravitic Emanation. I thought it was the same as Dark Nova Emanation, it's a cone, it's a ranged blast, I figured it was a damage power. No, it's a control power, a much more powerful one than the Nova version. You can't treat them the same, because they're intended to be totally opposite.

If you're going for a more melee oriented build, as many PBs do, then Solar Flare isn't really appropriate. Which is too bad, because it's pretty good damage. I think if Pulsar did some of the damage Solar Flare does, they'd both be more useful. But I don't think the devs envision Human Form PBs as melee damage dealers, I think they're expecting Solar Flare to be the attack you use to drive foes back so you can blast them.

You've got two IOs in Cloaking Device which provide Defense, base unsuppressed value is 7.5%, so you must be getting about 53.3% Enhancement from your IOs. A level 50 IO on Schedule B is about 25.5%, and I would calculate the two you have (if they're both 50) are around 41.4%.

So there's a discrepancy of about 10%, but that's the difference between 11.5 and 10.6, so that's not really that much. It sounds like there's some error there, but maybe it's just rounding or a glitch.

Well, as everyone likely knows, I have been a campaigner for Force Fields to gain more soloability in the past, and so I don't necessarily agree with its position on your list. For one thing, it is very hard to clarify what is a "usable while solo" power. Dark's Howling Twilight is certainly usable solo, and even useful on a team when no one is dead, but that is not its PRIMARY purpose. I don't think you can say that Howling Twilight is the same power solo as it is on a team.

Likewise, Detention Field (and Sonic Cage) is an extremely useful power solo, possibily even to the point where it can make soloing possible, and yet it is universally accepted to be nearly useless on a team. So while other sets may have team based powers they would skip for a solo build, Detention Field is a power that can actually be detrimental for a team build, when an actual team based power (such as Deflection Shield) would be much more useful.

Personally, I feel that the balance of team-based versus solo-usable powers isn't the issue. Rather, it is the relative strength OF those solo powers. If the limited number of solo powers provided all the capability required of a solo Defender, there would be no problem, outside of "must have" powers that are the hallmark of any such a concentrated selection of capabilities. Looking at many of the buff-based sets, it looks very much like the powers are intended to be complementary, with the capabilities of a buff being split between a team usable one, and one usable on the caster. For instance, Kinetics has Siphon Speed and Speed Boost, and Force Field has Deflection/Insulation Shield and Personal Force Field. (Although PFF is due to its design more of a situational power and not constant protection)

Another, even larger issue, is the lack of offensive benefit in many of the same sets that you point out for low solo-oriented powers. Empathy has no offensive boosts which are usable on the caster, and even Pain Domination, while it has been given many damage boosts (and intentionally so, I believe) still requires a teammate for many of them. Thermal, like Cold Domination, puts off its offensive boost until level 32. (38 for Corruptors) Many of your suggestions revolve around this lack of offense, although in your case you often recommend either +recharge or +end in place of more damage. (But both are offensive buffs)

This brings me around to Sonic, which is the one place in which I am in complete agreement. Sonic suffers from many of the same drawbacks as FF, coupled with even more powers, particularly its one primary offensive boost, which are not usable solo. I have said this before, and I'll say it again, it seems completely backwards to me that Sonic ASSAULT actually offers more -Res to a Defender than Sonic RESONANCE. I think the strength of Sonic Assault is the root of this problem, if Sonic Res were stronger, Sonic Assault would be overpowered.

On the other hand, Sonic sacrifices most of its protection and nearly all of its knockback (Liquify is the only power that still retains a portion of FF's crowd control capabilities) for that increased offense, and it's not nearly enough. And the other blast sets are not all that different in their capabilities, Rad Blast is capable of considerable -Def even compared to Rad Emission, and Dark Blast can lower -Acc about the same as Dark Miasma. Sonic's issues are more that so many of its powers are ally targettable instead of foe targetted, and that its Res is not really comparable to FF's Def. (1 Def is supposedly equal to about 2 Res, and Sonic's Resistance isn't anywhere near that)

I'm not saying that your suggestions aren't good ones, but there may be more to it than just number of powers. The solution, I think, is to concentrate on the powers that ARE usable solo, and rather than change them around in violation of the Cottage Rule, to add on additional capabilities that merely supplement the existing use. For instance, I've suggested making Sonic Siphon like Siphon Power, when it siphons Resistance from its target, it gives it to the caster. This will help augment the Defender's Sonic Dispersion and help bring up his resiliance, which is an issue since he lacks PFF. Making it a cone or AoE in terms of the -Res effect will help, too, and help balance that Disruption Field is not usable when solo.

Likewise, I would definately like to see Empathy gain more offensive boosts from their powers in much the same as Pain Domination. That "experiment" seems to have been somewhat successful, and Empathy and Thermal could use to be given much the same sort of treatment. Of course, any power that requires a teammate to use is not going to be useful solo, but it will give the Defender or Corruptor a more solid role in a duo or a small team.

Personally, one of the things I always found useful about the Fitness Pool was that the powers were all Auto. I did not have to place anything in my tray or click anything. As the removal of Fitness has left no other Pool Powers that are Auto, I'd like to see that added.

Specifically, I would suggest something like Fighting. The last two powers could be a small Resistance, something like Body Armor (around 5-8%, depending on AT) and a Defense about 2/5 of Weave. (So slightly less than CJ or the like, or even equal, which I think would be fine since it is picked up later) Alternately, I have always thought it would be a good idea to have a Defense which is specifically against Ranged, to help out Blasters especially, and that could be higher since it's a more limited type of Defense.

The first power could be offensive, a small tohit bonus combined with a damage bonus. (An auto damage bonus would have to be combined with something else, since it couldn't be slotted) That just leaves the second, which if you split up a couple of Defense powers like I suggested, could be either Ranged and Melee, or Ranged and AoE.

So, who else read the headline and immediately thought, "Ray, when someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!"

According to City of Data, it is 3.75% which does not suppress, and 3.75% which suppresses. So half, and pretty much the same as all other stealth powers. (In other words, negligible unless stacked with something else)

A Crab is kind of like a Brute combined with a Corruptor, a Bane is kind of like a Brute combined with a Stalker. The Bane will do more damage and have stealth, while the Crab will have more AoE damage and be more resilient.

You tend to have less range with a Bane, but you do have the option to pick up the machine gun (plus the mace fires blasts) and most people just don't get much mileage out of the Crab melee attacks. (I personally love them, but I have a pure guncrab build that probably has the better damage)

Ultimately, I think it comes down to the question of whether you want stealth or not. That's really the only capability that you can't build a Crab to share with a Bane. And of course with the stealth comes a somewhat different strategy for damage, since it makes your melee attacks do more damage.

Amusingly enough, I have never played both the Rad/ and /Rad combination in the same character. I have an FF/Rad Defender and an Illusion/Rad Controller. I tried out Rad/Rad in Beta and didn't like it, though, because I didn't want to have the ability to heal. If I'd known today what I know now, I would have thrown concept out the window, or at least just skipped Radiant Aura.

Pretty much I have nothing to add that everyone else has not already addressed. But I will emphasise that Rad Blast is a fairly low damage set. It is not bad, but with the high recharge of Neutrino and -Def debuff in place of a "heavier hitting" secondary effect, it really doesn't do well without a good damage boost behind it, which fortunately Rad Emission does with RI and EF. Don't both slotting for -Def, it's good for fitting -Def IOs into your build for Set Bonuses, but your average build should never have a problem with accuracy.

Of the two anchor toggles, I consider Enervating Field to be the more powerful, as doing more damage (due to -Res) is always an advantage both to you and the team. Conversely, though, -Acc tends to help teams overall more than -Dam. It depends a lot on your team makeup, and honestly, there's no reason not to get both.

Don't ignore the power of Lingering Radiation, either. It's the third spoke of your defensive wheel, foes hit by it not only slow their movement, bunching up more for AoEs, but they also fire less often. So that's quite handy.

Honestly, the people who talk about how horridly low Defender damage is... ignore them. You will have a +25% damage boost from Accellerate Metabolism, and assuming your teammates are on the ball enough to gather when you tell them to, so will they, as well. Solo or on a small team you get 10-30% more damage yourself. And then, on top of that, once your FINAL damage is calculated, you can add 30% MORE damage from Enervating Field. You can probably ignore slotting for Accuracy (between Radiation Infection and your own Def Debuffs you shouldn't have any trouble hitting anything yourself) and if you use procs in Neutrino like others have suggested, that'll raise your damage even more. And your foes will move and fire like they're swimming in molasses, have serious trouble hitting you, and when they do hit you, will do only 3/4 of their damage.

No, a Rad Defender doesn't lack damage. Your biggest headache will be yelling at the teammates that keep killing your anchors.

Transfusion also has a 20 ft radius. Either the "pet" versions of the AoE heals took a hit in some sort of adjustment across ATs (each AT has not always summoned his own pet, sometimes Defenders and Controllers/Corruptors have shared the same one) or it has always been that way.

I'm inclined to believe the latter, because the MM version is 10 ft, exactly half of everyone else. And AFAIK heal radius is not and has never been effected by AT otherwise.

Yeah, the crash used to keep you from attacking at all. There were complaints, though, that you could not use Taunt, or (possibly) other click powers such as heals. It was changed to its current incarnation, which allows you to attack, but with a huge damage debuff.

As there is a minimum damage for attacks, you have probably never noticed it, since orange numbers still come up. But they are single digit numbers, maybe 4 or 6 or the like.

Vet Rewards are immune to this effect, which is why a lot of people recommend taking Sands of Mu for use during the crash. I personally just wail away with Brawl to keep Fury up, since it costs no End, and proportionally speaking it's probably not really that much less damage than some other attack under such a high debuff.

Since a lot of the powers look like you spit the poison, I would say Mutant would be an acceptable Origin.

Honestly, any Origin should be able to fit any powers. (It might be a bit hard to fit Robots to Magic, but there's really nothing in the game rules that prevents it. Besides, there is also your Secondary, you could be Robots/Dark and the Dark is the Magic)

Another point I thought of, you could be Necromancy/Poison, and since the zombies vomit poison, you could make yourself look like a zombie too, and say that your poison is just a more advanced form of zombie vomit.

I think the idea of "Kheldian Kryptonite" fell by the wayside once the devs' datamining told them that, no, Ranged + Defense does NOT equal "Tank Mage". Tank Mage is Ranged and Defense in excess, not in balance. Voids pretty much have had their teeth pulled, so they are more atmosphere and backstory now, not some additional challlenge.

One thing to note about SoA, though, is that other Arachnos units aren't automatically friendly to you. They don't show up in other enemy groups' missions, like Voids, but they will aggro on you on the streets, just like any villain, and many of your missions put you up against them. In fact, the story arc states plainly that the other Arachnos soldiers resent you because you put your name on the Destined One list.

Of course, given that the whole point of the Destined One list in the first place seems to be "last one standing wins", and the fact that Arachnos as a whole seems to be constantly disrupted by infighting, that you would be attacked by other Arachnos really shouldn't be all that surprising.

Oo, good question. I'll enjoy answering this one.

Well, let's see... they say pictures are worth a thousand words, maybe I can make some comparisons to my characters as I created them at release.

Jade Dragon - At release Today

The primary problem with JD is that I was unable to get his cape or aura from level 1. But his costume has remained unchanged, except for changes to his symbol. It's supposed to be a dragon's head, but I finally settled on the coiled serpent. I also notice I changed the color of his shirt from that bright lime green, that must have been pretty early on.

Blue Diamond - At release

BD's costume has remained unchanged. It's a pretty classic Golden Age costume, really, and I think it works perfectly for him. His "evil" variation wears a leather jacket over the t-shirt, but as with JD, his symbol is really the focal point of his costume, and this time I was able to get it perfect.

Genie Gold - At release Without wings With wings (to left)

Okay, big changes here. The first and main change was the addition of the Chinese pants and vest top, which allowed me to finally get the "genie" look right. The third picture shows her after I added wings, but also, it shows the final version of her symbol. While I had always used the "atom", I had at first tried to make it solid yellow, to represent a cloud. Finally, though, I abandoned that idea and went back to the atom symbol, as it was a closer representation of her power over matter. I made the atom orange, on a yellow background, which I think made it stand out better.

If you're noticing that GG and the dog in the third pic have a similar color scheme, you're right. (You might also have noticed they have the same symbol) The dog was actually the original concept for the character, but dog heads weren't available at release. Thus, GG was created as a human version of the concept. When the dog features were added with CoV, I finally was able to create my original dog concept. Both are shapechangers, but I chose different ways to implement that power. GG is an Illusion/Rad Controller, she uses her powers to reshape the air around her. Element Dog is currently implemented as a Kheldian, although I've also played him as a Stone Armor Brute.

Bloodwolf - At release

He hasn't changed. He's just a Natural skill-based Scrapper with a straightforward camoflage costume for blending into the shadows. He has no symbol, as he leaves his mark behind on the wall as a warning.

Sandy - Concept sketch At release After scale sliders After aura Piston Boots New costumes

Sandy's probably the character I've changed the most. She was originally created for a fanfiction based on another game. (For which I drew the first picture) From the beginning, her concept has been a mix of human and machine, without really a clear dividing line between the two. I wanted to see if I could capture her look in the game, though, and there were three things that I think really were central; 1) the green gem set into her chest, 2) the glowing eyes, 3) the larger calves and forearms that emphasise that those parts are machine.

The main disappointment I had with the original attempt was that I couldn't make her a "teenager", as despite being small, she just looked like a small adult. I was also stuck with the glowing eyes face, since there were no auras at the time. You may also note my first choice of color was a darker tan than what I finally settled on. She was supposed to be sort of the color of clay or sand, and I finally decided the yellower color was closer. I also could not give her wings at the time, but in retrospect I've decided that she didn't really need them.

When the scale sliders came out was when I finally got Sandy to where I wanted her. With the auras I was finally able to give her glowing eyes with the face that I preferred for her, and I eventually added the Piston Boots because they both gave her a great graphic for her jumping ability, and they "rounded off" the original boot style I had used. The final picture I have is of an alternate costume for her, going back to the concept sketch, I decided that her stomach is mechanical, like in the drawing, and she covers it up with the one piece bathing suit outfit she normally uses. My idea is that she's ashamed of it, she thinks it makes her look ugly, but as she's become more comfortable with her looks she's allowed herself to expose more and more of the area.

I honestly couldn't really get the mix of machine and flesh just right, as I said, the game makes you pretty much set the dividing line at the waist, between the chest and legs. But I think I hinted at mechanical parts using the first out fit (which uses the Clockwork yop under the shirt) and a mix, like the machinery has grown into her stomach, with the second.

On the subject of the OP, my answer is:

For Power Pools, I would set the priority to 10, but only for certain powers. Hasten, Super Speed, Stealth (I want the same "shadow" effect from Shadowy Presence) and the Medicine powers are high priority. But the devs don't have to do the whole Pool at once.

For Ancillary Pools, again, priority of 10. I don't regard them as any different from the Primary and Secondary powers, personally.

For Patron Pools, however, now that Ancillary Pools exist for Villains, I think the need for customization is lower. And I think the customization should be more limited. There should be some freedom to interpret the powers as you see fit, but they should still reflect the Patrons. The Mu lightning, for instance, might be limited to shades of red, and Ghost Widow's powers would still retain their unique "souls" look. They could be left as they are for now, and returned to later, as long as Ancillary pools are editable.

As for Kheldians, as you might guess from above, I want at least color customization, priority of 10. But again, I'm not opposed to limiting the selection, and I think it should be limited. I want a gold color scheme for one of my Peacebringers, REALLY badly (and green for the other) but it should be a bright, Peacebringer-shade of gold. Likewise, my Warshade may go a little redder to reflect his descent into villainy, but he will pretty much stay with his dark purple. This isn't unusual, though, Ice has limited color options, and so does Stone, and that didn't delay them getting options.

SoA, there's the issue with customizing both the weapons and the blasts they make. But then again, customizing Kheldian forms will be an issue, too. Granite and the Kheldian forms are stuck with the same problem, they can't currently be customized as implemented. So if the devs can manage to resolve that issue, maybe they can resolve letting you customize both your weapon and the fx of the powers that use that weapon.

So 10 for color customization of Kheldians, 10 for new Widow blade options and Soldier rifle options, but maybe 6 for Kheldian form customization and Fortunata blasts. The latter will take much more work.

I've always said that your Origin details precisely and only where your powers COME FROM. Where you go after you enter Paragon City at level 1, and what you do to further your powers and access new ones, has nothing to do with what your origin was in the past. If you are a Magic Origin, you can pick up a Jet Pack or a Revolver and use its powers, if you are a Technology Origin, you can pick up a Wedding Band or the Sands of Mu and use those powers.

And even Origin is limited. I have a robot character that is powered by occult energy, which I created specifically because he could NOT be classified as either Technology or Magic. He is both, and I could have chosen either. But just because he's a robot, that doesn't stop him using magic, and just because he uses magic, that doesn't mean he can't augment his technological body.

Putting it another way, your Origin is the core of your powers. If you take the Patron Powers, it's stated in the game lore that you're "borrowing" power from the Patrons. You could role play it as an extension of your own powers, of course, but then it's not a Patron Power, it's just another form of APP. You're just (assuming you even care about concept) choosing something that's closer to your concept than the other APPs available.

As for Incarnates, it's my understanding that Incarnates are the "original Origin" that the Origin of Power arc was talking about. There is no Origin for Incarnates, it's a whole new Origin all its own. So if you're a Natural, you would become a Natural with Incarnate powers. Honestly, some of my skill-based Natural heroes might not want to become Incarnate for that reason, he wouldn't trust such absolute power. On the other hand, if the only way to fight absolute power is with absolute power, he might take the chance that he can keep from being corrupted by it. Or at least keep the corruption to a minimum.

If I decided to role play it, I might decide my Natural hero chose instead to find some other way to augment his powers to the same level. Some of my other characters I might ignore the official canon as well, while others might embrace it, just like the Patrons. Since I have few enough characters that have even gotten to 50 in the first place, I'm not sure that it's an issue to me.