Justaris

Well, there's a couple of things to consider here.
<ul type="square">[*]You're not a Scrapper. Nor are you a Blaster. Defender damage is just going to be lower, that's part of the balance tradeoff Defenders have for their incredibly powerful buffs &amp; debuffs.
[*]So what's the point of the secondary powers? Well, several things. First off, just because it does less damage doesn't mean that damage is insignificant. You can still do decent damage that is helpful in a team setting and of course vital when solo. You won't be one-shotting things, but you can still handily complete missions yourself if you need to.

The secondary powers also offer a secondary effect. In the cast of Radiation Blast, that secondary effect is -Defense. In other words, making enemies easier to hit. Irradiate and Neutron Bomb both have very large values for this secondary effect and between them you can drastically reduce the defense of an entire spawn, making them easy prey for you and your team. If you've taken Choking Cloud from your primary, drastically dropping the defense of the spawn also makes them easy marks for it since reducing their defense is in effect making Choking Cloud (and all your other powers, and all your teammates' powers) more accurate.

The third reason secondaries are important for Defenders is control/mitigation. All of the secondaries offer at least one power to help you control the battlefield. For Radiation Blast, that's Cosmic Burst, and it's excellent. It's a good single-target attack that also stuns the foe. Probably one of the best powers in the powerset if not the best. [/list]
You really shouldn't be feeling useless at 32 on a Rad/Rad. Are you using Single Origin enhancements? You might consider posting your build, perhaps we can give you some pointers that will help you enjoy your character more. If you don't already have it, you can use Mids Hero Designer.

Wow is most certainly the word.

I never expected to get flamed for that particular post. Ouch. Thought I'd get to have a stimulating discussion and instead it's turned nasty for no reason I can see. I'll grant that I didn't list Poison Gas's sleep effect, mostly because thinking of it as a sleep power rather than a -DMG debuff isn't something I usually do on my TAs. Based on the recommendations in your guide, I'd hazard a guess that those priorities hold true for you as well, though it seems you value the Sleep component higher than I did. Not mention that the level of utility the sleep component is likely to have for the OP, teamed with a Fire/Fire Blaster, seems like it might be rather low. That mea culpa aside, the other three powers you listed were addressed, correctly as far as I can see, in the post you replied to. I don't see that this oversight merited the level of bile I got in reply. Kind of depressing really.

I'm going to assume someone just had a bad day and is lashing out and not take this personally. Luminara wrote a heck of a good guide on TA and frankly this thread is rather disappointing. I don't need condescension. Obviously I know that debuffs are not controls, though debuffs and KB/KD powers (particularly with KB/KD) you get a similar result in a MOB that's effectively locked down and either unable to act or unable to pose a significant threat.

Based on the statement "TA has as much control than Dark and Storm put together", it seemed perhaps that's what was meant since otherwise the statement would appear to be wrong or at least hyperbole. Dark (4) + Storm (1, by this definition, since much of the mitigation here is either debuff based or KB based) = 5. So the only way TA has as much as Dark and Storm put together is if you toss out Black Hole or if you're counting powers as 'control' beyond just various kinds of mezzes. Based on Luminara's reply to me, it's glaringly obvious that isn't the case, so I suppose we're tossing out Black Hole.

However, if we're arguing on strict definitions here rather than practical utility, I don't see how you can do that. The fact is that Dark has four control powers, Storm has one, TA has four. If we are giving powers weight by utility and thus throwing out Black Hole, then I don't see how TA's four powers beat Dark's remaining three. You're talking about an autohit cone stun, a cone fear and an ST hold stacked against an ST immobilize, an ST hold, an AOE sleep (66% chance, anyway) and an AOE hold that's got a -1000% recovery self-debuff. I'd say the autohit nature of Howling Twilight alone puts Dark in the lead there.

Of course, all this came about just trying to address the assertion that TA was far and away a better choice than Dark or Storm. It's certainly not a bad choice for control for a Defender as should now be abundantly obvious, but neither is it the clearly superior alternative.

But apparently I'm completely clueless, so perhaps there's something wrong there I'm not seeing. If so, I sincerely hope that someone will enlighten me. And I don't mean that sarcastically - if I'm wrong, show me I'm wrong. Preferably without implying that I'm a complete buffoon, if possible.

Bottom line for the OP: Dark, Storm or TA primaries would provide good control for a Defender. The extent to which one is better than the other is probably largely irrelevant in the end anyway as you're going to have other factors in the primary and from your secondary in the mix as well as far as mitigation goes. By this standard alone you'd think Storm was near the bottom with only one true control power, which in actual practice is not the case and Storm actually offers strong mitigation in other ways.

Although not very much of it.

Not a bad first post and this is indeed the place for questions.

If you mean in-game, it probably refers to slash commands such as /invite name or /leaveteam. In general computing terms it's when you have a line from which you can run commands, such as the Run command in Windows. If it's the technical computing info you want, then Technical Issues would be a better forum. I about used up my IT knowledge writing this paragraph.

I think a case can be made that KB at the very least is a form of 'soft' control. Slow, less so, and -recharge is something of a stretch.

As for TA being control-heavy, while it's certainly debuff-heavy it doesn't have all that many status effects. If we're not considering slows or -recharge then Glue Arrow's out, which leaves a single-target hold (Ice Arrow) and nuke-style AOE hold/-regen debuff (EMP Arrow). OSA, being knockdown, presumably doesn't count as control either if knockback doesn't. That leaves Flash Arrow (which I'm not sure should count) and Entangling Arrow (single-target immobilize). Three, maybe four powers by the "no KB, no slows" definition.

So, both sets get a single-target hold. TA adds a -perception debuff that could be viewed as control, a single-target immobilize, and a nuke-style hold. Add in Glue Arrow for slow and OSA for knockdown too.

Compare that to Dark, which on top of the single-target hold also gets a slow comparable to Glue Arrow in Tar Patch, gets an autohit stun in Howling Twilight that also happens to debuff regeneration and rez, a cone fear in Fearsome Stare, an AOE intangible and a pet who may (if he feels like it) use a single-target hold as well. That's four, maybe five control powers.

Even if you write off Black Hole as useless and dismiss the Dark Servant as unreliable, bringing it down to three, and give TA Flash Arrow to give it four powers, that's still an immobilize, a -perception, an ST hold and a nuke AOE hold vs a cone fear, an autohit cone stun and an ST hold. Canceling out Petrifying Gaze and Ice Arrow, I'd still say Fearsome Stare + Howling Twilight &gt; Entangling Arrow + Flash Arrow + EMP Arrow for control.

So while I loves me some TA, I don't think it's as control-heavy as Dark or Storm. Dark especially feels to me to have more control than is offered by TA. I feel that's a reasonable statement.

Now, if you want to talk which has more varied and useful debuffs, that's a horse of a different color... TA's a clear winner there by a mile as the only things Dark can do better are -tohit and -regen. If TA had -regen outside of EMP, Dark wouldn't even have that much.

I agree with IronYeti. I'd say clearly the most control-heavy primaries would be Storm and Dark, though in very different ways.

Dark commands very strong -tohit, good -dmg, good -res, good -regen in two powers, fear, and the best and most useful rez in the game. I'd agree that Dark probably pairs better with Ice or with Sonic than with Dark, but Dark/Dark is a strong combo too.

For pairing with a Fire/Fire Blaster I'd probably choose either Dark/Ice or Dark/Dark because both give you methods of containing enemies within your Tar Patches for him to annihilate. I'd lean towards Dark/Dark for TT, but the slows in Ice combined with the slow in Tar Patch should do the job too.

Storm commands great slows, good -tohit, great -res, actually does damage, and offers the power (and potential danger) of controlled chaos in the KB. I'd pair Storm with Sonic, Psy or Dark. For pairing with Fire Blaster I'd lean towards Dark Blast or Psy Blast to get stacked disorients and extra control tools.

Overall, both offer a good stealth/resistance toggle buff. Storm has a targeted heal, while Dark can rez. As a duo, I'd take the Dark for the -regen and the rez over the Storm, but either would make a great choice.

In terms of personal defense, you're not going to get much of anything until you get access to an armor power in the 40s (i.e. Temporary Invulnerability here). Unslotted Manuevers gives 3.5% Defense while Combat Jumping gives 2.5%, so Leadership is better (and applies to the entire team).

If you're really looking for good personal defense, you'll want to look into IO Sets and try to stack up good levels of Defense that way. Power pools alone aren't going to make a big difference in this respect. With the right IO slotting you could get very respectable levels of Defense going, though you may have to compromise in other areas to attain this.

As for the knockback, you can always get a -KB IO, though they can be a bit expensive on the Market. That's the only thing I can see really losing by dropping the Leaping pool and frankly I don't think taking three powers (CJ, SJ and Acro) is worth it for the KB protection. I'd rather shell out for the IO. YMMV.

Keep in mind that what you're seeing is server load, not necessarily 'more people'. Freedom and Virtue are the most populous servers, of course, but don't assume that because other servers have a single green dot that they're empty - the servers have been upgraded several times since you played four years ago and there are plenty of people on all the servers.

Infinity in particular is probably third or fourth in terms of population. Of course, since anyone can play on any server, populations are variable rather than static. Many people have characters on multiple servers.

In short, moving isn't necessary. If you want to, go for it, but don't feel that you need to. You don't.

I was going to post, but Steelclaw said it perfectly.

I'll just add that I agree with Split_Light's point about not having a "main". Haven't had one for a long time now, and I think it confuses people sometimes, especially those who are trying to 'win the game' by getting a 'main' to 50, or completely purpled out, or whatever. I don't even have a primary badge hunter anymore.

Or, just maybe, this has been brought up many times before (at least once very recently) and a search would have revealed all this that others now have to rehash.

Basically, it's to be expected that a good portion of the core playerbase would get this if they could afford it, meaning that it has to be priced high enough to offset the eventual loss of revenue after it pays for itself and those players start essentially playing for free. I'd expect such a thing to cost at least $300, probably quite a bit more, if it ever happened at all.

As Fleeting_Whisper mentioned, we have somewhat anomalously high retention rates in this game - while that could mean some serious coin for NCSoft in the short term, in the long term in could mean a significant percentage of players no longer paying at all down the road, which could be bad for the game.

Yeah, endurance usage hasn't changed, but the contrast after playing a high-level character can be jarring. Since you have Beginner's Luck before level 20, I often slot endurance reduction primarily, with things like accuracy, damage and recharge coming second. That usually changes when I have access to SOs and Stamina in the 20s, but I'd recommend slotting heavily for EndRedux and using toggles selectively in the low levels.

It's really good for a power pool attack, probably the best. It does knockup and it does -fly, plus it does reasonably good damage.

As for Mids Hero Designer, it's recently changed hands as Mids has retired from updating it and passed the reins to someone new. I'd expect they're hard at work updating it, but it'll probably be a little while yet.

Edited to correct error

Unfortunately, the edit window has long passed on the guide, so it's not possible to do that without putting out a full new version of the guide. I eventually plan to do that, but the next version will address Inventions and since there are so many viable options as far as Inventions go, it'll likely be a while.

Edit: As the new forums allow edits of old posts, like this guide, the above has now been corrected with version 2.1 of the guide.

Nothing special really - like most any other TF you'll want a group of non-retarded people who can use teamwork on at least a sixth-grade level. This may be harder to find that you'd expect sometimes.

You can read up on the TF here and also here. The only real wrinkle is your strategy for finding Romulus and his Nicti at the end. There are several workable strategies, but it pays for the entire team to know in advance what they plan to do, so you don't end up trying to implement contradictory tactics (e.g. one approach calls for taking down Romulus himself several times over, as he will rez himself by destroying one of his Nictus allies each time until there are none left. Other approaches call for separating and taking out the Nictus allies first. You can see how a team that did half one way and half the other would fail at both).

If you have three of the same inspirations in your tray (say, for instance, three small reds), you can combine them into one of any other inspiration of the same tier. So three small reds can become a small awaken. Three small oranges can become a small breakfree. And so on and so forth.

While rez powers can be very handy for getting an ally back into the thick of things in the heat of combat, after the fact it's usually fairly easy to scrounge up an awaken, playing a little game of "go fish" with your teammates if you happen to not have three of a kind. And as combat rez powers go, there are many that have Resurrect beat.

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With the way IOs and a Khelds inherent works it is not hard to cap resistances in Human Form, plus I believe both Khelds have 2 self heals plus pets and a Nuke.

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Not quite. While both do have a nuke (Dawn Strike/Quasar), the self-heals are dramatically different. Peacebringers get a Dull Pain clone (Essence Boost), a self-heal (Reform Essence) and another self-heal in Dwarf (White Dwarf Sublimation).

Warshades, by contrast, get a drain (Essence Drain), a corpse-powered +hp/+endurance power (Stygian Circle, aka 'pure awesome') and another drain in Dwarf (Black Dwarf Drain). I'm not sure I would even term the Warshade powers 'self-heals', at least not as comparable to the PB powers, as all three require the presence of enemies (living for drains, defeated for Circle).

There's no reason any reasonably built character should be dependent on groups unless you've deliberately designed the character that way. There's no need to gimp yourself for solo play just to be desirable for teams as good builds do very well in both scenarios.

In Fire Control, the key powers are Flashfire (by far), Hot Feet, Fire Cages, Fire Imps and to a lesser extent Cinders. If you don't know what Containment is, I'd read up on that as it's key to playing any Controller but especially a Fire Controller.

As for Empathy, you're going to want the key buffs. Fortitude, Recovery Aura, Adrenaline Boost, Clear Mind. Other good but not necessarily critical powers are Regeneration Aura, Heal Other, Resurrect (probably the most skippable now that anyone with three identical insps can make their own awakens) and Absorb Pain. Don't make the mistake of assuming that healing is the most important part of Empathy. It isn't.

As for the farming, while it's rampant right now with many people flagrantly breaking the MA rules and farming left and right, those farms are gradually going to be removed by GMs so I wouldn't get too used to that sort of thing.

First off, aside from IOs, there's not much that's changed for Khelds aside from the Inherent now working across forms. So regardless of how much 'dust' the guides may have, most are still very much applicable.

Second, the tremendous variation in Kheldian builds makes guides that provide IO builds extremely limiting unless the guide in question provides a variety of different options. I despise posting builds for Kheldians in guides for just this reason - there's no 'best way' and I dislike putting forth anything that pretends to be such.

As for the Nova question, Dark Nova has four blast powers. Once you six-slot those, you're going to have more slots left over. You could put together a workable Human/Nova build that used Human form largely for utility and IO Sets however and that should work reasonably well. Not gimped, but perhaps not as good as you might be.

A full-on Human/Nova build with slotting towards actually spending some time in human form might ultimately be stronger, as spending 100% of the time in either form tends to be very limiting.

Well, if you're looking for an endurance buff to give the Dark/DB Tank, Kin is really the only thing. Rad's AM is far less effective as an endurance buff than Speed Boost (let alone SB + Transference) but makes up for it by providing a bunch of other stuff. Frankly, Kineticists are the masters of +damage and endurance buffs. That's what they do.

Plenty of people, however, play Tankers and all sorts of other stuff without Endurance buffs of any kind. I wouldn't say that an endurance buff is a must. The Dark/DB Tank can take Stamina and slot EndRedux and should be able to do just fine.

Given what you've done before, I agree that Dark Miasma is a fine choice. If you're really concerned about endurance buffs you could go for Empathy, which is the other primary which offers really powerful endurance buffs, but in my opinion the Dark Miasma is probably better for what you're looking at and would have good synergy.

So as for secondaries, I wouldn't count out Dark Blast. The -tohit, especially if you end up ramping up your difficulty later on, can still be very significant. It also offers really excellent damage over time and helps to keep things in one place with Tenebrous Tentacles. I'm a big fan of Dark Blast.

Other good options include Sonic for the -res debuffs, Ice for the slows and and Psy for the soft control and -recharge. Dark/Sonic in particular is an excellent soloist/small teams choice and I think I'd go with Sonic if not Dark.

Sounds interesting - I'm sorry I missed this thread until after the first meeting. I should be free that weekend.

It'd be nice if you thought about the idea. As for having different versions of the game on different servers, that's not more efficient. That's less efficient. Many people like to complain about bugs in just one live version of the game. Having multiple versions of the game means having to maintain and troubleshoot several completely different iterations of the game at once. It's a nightmare from a CS perspective.

And what about cross-server setups like the Market or global channels? And where do these extra servers come from? Why should the Devs expend extra money to (supposedly) keep players who left over changes to the game. I doubt putting up a non-ED server where people could go back to the bad old days of unkillable Fire Tanks would really retain more players. A few might come back, quickly get bored and leave again.

And that's assuming your 'nostalgia' server would be a new one. If you made one of the existing servers into this nonsense, you'd lose players. A lot of players.

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First off, this is probably impossible. Also, the level cap was 40 in Issue 1, there was no PvP, no villains, no Inventions, no badges, no Market, no AE, no Kheldians, several of the zones didn't exist...

Yeah, this is probably one of the worst "repeal ED" posts I've seen. ED isn't going away. A rollback to Issue 1 would probably break the game in a variety of intersting and catastrophic ways. This is not a good idea. Probably not even a possible idea.

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So, you think the game nowadays is in good shape?
Sorry, this aint my opinion, but, its just me.

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Seems like your opinions is precisely what it is. Let's look at the things you listed though - ED, the market, punishment for exploitation of the MA, badge removals

ED can't coexist with Inventions - if we had both we'd be stupidly overpowered. Right now the power that the high-end Inventions such as Purple Sets offer is offset by their rarity and thus their cost on the market. So the only way you could feasibly repeal ED would be to undo Inventions. And yes, I like Inventions better. Instead of 1 Acc/5 Damage I now have a number of viable choices that offer me different things. Making builds is more interesting post-Inventions than it was pre-ED.

The market.. I'm not sure why this is even a 'problem'.

Punishment for exploiters... again, not sure why punishment for cheating is a problem. Some people got hit unfairly and those punishments should be reversed and most likely will be. While a public apology wouldn't be out of line, neither do I think one is absolutely necessary so long as the innocent people get back everything in good order. As for there being punishment at all, I have trouble believing that anyone other than those who were cheating are against punishing cheating.

Badge removal - not a huge fan of this one, though after they posted the reasoning I can understand it. Frankly, the high count badges probably should have been left out of I-14 entirely rather than being removed later, but hindsight is always 20/20. In the end, if it results in fewer very high-count badges, I'm optimistic about this change.

Overall, yes, I think the game is in good shape.

Rolling the game all the way back to Issue 1 would somehow magically make the game better? Don't think so. The game is much better, more fun and more complex now than it was at release. Which pretty much goes for any MMO anywhere. With the possible exception of SWG.

First off, this is probably impossible. Also, the level cap was 40 in Issue 1, there was no PvP, no villains, no Inventions, no badges, no Market, no AE, no Kheldians, several of the zones didn't exist...

Yeah, this is probably one of the worst "repeal ED" posts I've seen. ED isn't going away. A rollback to Issue 1 would probably break the game in a variety of interesting and catastrophic ways. This is not a good idea. Probably not even a possible idea.

As the links above show, good suggestions generally get Dev attention while poor suggestions generally can't withstand player criticism and thus tend to crash and burn early. If an idea is so full of flaws that it can't be survive a round in S&amp;I then it's probably best it doesn't get implemented anyway. Some really good ideas have come through this part of the forums - and some really bad ones too.

Suggestions aren't against any rules, so reporting them to mods is just a waste of a moderator's time. Nor do moderators have any bearing on whether or not a suggestion is implemented other than the power to remove the thread if the poster (or others in the thread) get out of line.

As for "being a Dev's friend", while there are some posters who've justly earned a reputation for vast knowledge of the game, you don't have to be one of them to get the ear of the Devs. All you really need is a good idea and the communication skills to put it forth in a legible manner.

It also helps if you can respond to criticism constructively and not attack anyone who disagrees with you or points out flaws in the suggestion. There are some posters who perceive any disagreement with their ideas as personal attacks / conspiracy against them. Those threads generally don't do well or last long.

The people doing the TF can be no lower than the low end of the range (in this case, for Synapse, everyone on the TF must be at least level 15). People doing the TF can be any level over 15, but will not gain xp if they are over level 20. Instead, they will be exemplared to 20 for the duration of the TF.