Kelenar

Well, there is /petcomall stay. I tested with my bots a little, and it seemed like if I set them to stay, they'd properly shoot enemies with ranged attacks... unless an enemy got close, in which case they'd use their brawl and then go into punchzerker mode. Setting my bots to stay a good distance from the enemies, then running up and placing caltrops a safe distance ahead, I've had pretty good luck at keeping my bots out of melee.

Another problem with huge maps, especially at low levels--there's a very good chance you'll level in the mission and end up fighting -1s for the rest of it. Or even -2s or -3s if you level multiple times.

Those things are pretty mean. I don't think I've ever dropped one before they swarm me to death or I ended up just running away.

Yeah, agreed. The older books are still plenty good by themselves, and while most of the books are pretty friendly to a newcomer picking them up, they still work best read in chronological order.

Yes.

On my Earth/Fire, things usually end up locked down enough that I'm quite safe in melee... which is coincidentally also the best place to use Combustion. Usually, spamming Fire Breath and Combustion a few times will mow down the minions, then I can treat all the lieutenants and bosses to Incinerate, Blaze, and Fire Blast until they keel over.

Consume is nice to keep around, but I agree with PhroX that you could skip it if need be. I like to drop it when it's up to boost my recovery until Domination recharges.

For ancillary pool, you might want to also consider one of the sets that offers a +defense toggle (Mace and Ice Mastery, I believe.) As I piled on +recharge, I eventually hit a point where my AoE controls were up every spawn, so I could generally solo very large spawns, but those same spawns could shred me in seconds if I got unlucky and missed a few or a patrol wandered into the mix. Layering some defense on really helped. Plus, they can take LotGs!

That one was awesome, but I wouldn't wanna do it if I weren't sure of the character's capabilities. Think I had six separate bosses chasing me down at one point... good way to keep me on my feet while playing my perma-dom.

Ooh, yeah, I forgot those. I regret deleting my characters Colors, Inchoate, and My Hero, because I lost all of the names as a result.

Same here. I also just plain don't like origins in general--they work for some of my characters, but others just get confusing. If a character is durable enough to survive fights because of a mutation, but uses naturally-trained kung fu to fight, are they Natural or Mutant? If they're super-strong due to a lab accident but amplify it with a suit of power armor, are they Science or Tech? I tend to just pick a best-fit origin, but they're loose enough that I mostly ignore them.

All three combos would be very strong.

Like Amy said, Dark/Sonic would be control-heavy to the point where you could skip some of it, and it'd probably also be the slowest soloer of the three, but also the safest for most of the game. All three of these combos can be pretty safe, but it's hard to top flooring every enemy's ToHit while fearing them.

Traps/Sonic is a pretty good jack-of-all-trades. You make up for the relatively poor solo AoE damage of Sonic Blast by being able to put spawns to sleep and then plant bombs on top of them. As an added bonus, you walk around with your own mezz protection, pack superb -regen, and have a pet that can let you take alphas of x8 anything.

Rad/Sonic is pretty similar to Traps/Sonic in a lot of ways. You don't get explicit mezz protection (instead relying on -ToHit, sleep, and soft controls to just keep the mezzes from landing,) but get more reliable debuffs, Accelerate Metabolism, and a heal in exchange, as well as one of the best AoE control powers in the game.

This is similar to how I have Neon Jenny set up. Fire/Rad Corruptor. Green and brown Fire Blast makes excellent Captain Planet style generic pollution.

Magatama, my Rad/Energy Blaster, has all of her attacks colored a pale yellow, and is actually shooting people with super-intense sunlight.

Hail Striker, my Storm/Archery Defender, is actually shooting icicles and lightning bolts out of her bow. This one, the game obviously doesn't let me customize just yet.

This is the big one for me. Oranbega does it too--if you've ever tried to stealth x5 and up spawns with lots of Behemoths on Oranbega, you'll notice that the enemies pretty much pack up the entire hall, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. That's friggin' annoying. I think a lot of the old maps could use to be widened.

My biggest problem with caves isn't their twistiness or how nonsensical they are, but how spread out the spawn points can be. It feels like I have to run half a mile between spawns sometimes, which is annoying on my Brute.

Your taste is good and you should feel good. Look into Baccano.

I've agreed with a lot of different people through this discussion, so I'm not even going to try quoting all of the relevant bits. Long story short, it's not necessarily so much about flash as about making sense--the big charge-up time for Energy Transfer, I'm okay with, but the three seconds of bouncing and juggling guns like some kind of jester on crack that most Dual Pistols attacks have annoys the crap out of me. It's probably the only set I'll never play because of aesthetics. My favorite sets tend to be the straightforward ones, animation-wise--Claws, stone melee, katana, and archery are all up there.

Big, flashy attacks are cool... but they should also be used sparingly. If the paladin holds their sword in the air, spends a few seconds calling down blessings on it before it starts to glow, and then slashes it down on their enemy so hard that the pavement cracks... while striking down the final boss... that's pretty cool. If they do it every time they hit a minion, it's dumb as hell. Ideally for me, the long animating/super-flashy attacks would only really be used for tier 9s and other suitably dramatic powers. Alternatively, the flashy animations would occur about one in ten times a power was used.

And Mace Mastery for delicious Scorpion Shield and PFF! Having constant defense to protect me from those 5% of guys I miss with Stalagmites, a power to save my butt when things go pear-shaped, and two extra slots for LotGs is just too delicious for me.

Going with the crowd on this one for suggesting Dark/ and Traps/. My Dark/Elec and Traps/Dark Defenders are the two that I feel confident walking into just about anything short of an AV solo. Rad/ is one of my favorite sets, but by itself, I find it a little subpar for soloing with no really reliable way to avoid getting mezzed... and when a lot of your defenses are in toggles, that hurts. If you go Rad/Sonic for Siren's Song, that weakness goes away and you have a delicious wrecking ball of a Defender.

I always just assumed it meant you were better at shooting them in places that hurt. At level one, you're just sort of barely nicking people, but by fifty, you're getting crippling pinpoint shots with every attack. And yes, this only really goes so far--if that were the total reason, a level one AR blaster would still have a chance to kill a level 50 minion without much fuss.

And Time Lord's Boon! (Though WW Teleporter is the one I get on pretty much every character.) I just wish these things refilled faster. I burn most of them way faster than they refill.

Hm, after stopping it mid-animation with a screenshot, you're right. I always thought it looked like you were throwing out a pair of metal blade-things, especially since they spin, but they do look more like a generic shockwave. Lame.

I would expect it will have a chance to heal the drone every time it fires.

400 million was the highest price I saw for crafted Apocalypses, and I recall Hecatombs as being lower when I checked. Maybe I was doing my marketeering during a low price point or something. Gonna have to check the market this evening and see what prices are at now. If I could've made an extra 50 million per IO by waiting another few hours, I'm going to need to experiment a little.

Last time I was crafting them for fun and profit (about three days ago,) most recipes for the damage sets were going for 150-300 million. Which I don't recall as being incredibly out of the ordinary compared to pre-i18 prices.