Madam_Enigma

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Brute: You don't know what you're talking about. I've been playing brutes for years, and you aren't even level 50.

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In other words, he thought if your current char is lowish level you've never experienced late game?!

Tell ya what, you have to go pure wolf spider till 24 anyway. Do that, and see if it's for you. If not, go with a wolf spider/bane build.

Well, I enjoyed playing a wolf spider huntsman up until 24, so why not?

You can go 'pure' Wolf Spider you know. You'd have more pool powers, but you can do it.

I'm thinking of 'pimping out' my crab to run the Oraboras TF's solo. Mostly because no one ever seems to run them with teams. To do so, I've come to the conclusion that soft capped (or near soft capped) defense is almost required. I don't really want to dip into pool powers too much (too many enticing crab powers), but will if I have to. Also not sure if pets would play a big roll in running them. Any advice on what sets and powers I should try for to do this? Oh, and I'm not getting a travel power. Gonna use slotted swift/sprint/mental training.

I heard it causes a time paradox which forces the devil to give back a soul to someone he made a deal with.

Nope, but don't count on those to keep things in the burn. Use glue arrow, entangle arrow, and/or ice arrow to keep things in it. On a thug/ta I'd suggest imobilizing or holding since the arsonist likely lit the dang thing up using a burn patch. Double stacked burn patch=+2 boss melts away.

Not sure why we're seeing two completely different behavors. For me, him using fire breath 100% of the time if close enough just didn't happen. He'd use it, or sometimes charge into melee (gah) and only use the swords.

For me, he now either uses fire breath or rain of fire (unless he's too far for fire breath). He only opens with char if he's out of fire breath range initially.

No, he doesn't start all the time with it, but then I noticed he never did. For me, he either starts with breath of fire, or rain of fire if he's close enough at battle start. Either way it's yummy. Especially if I remember I currently have smoke flash.

And yet, players who select soul storm DON'T get a mag 100 mez. It's mag 3 I believe for players. I have to stack it with the hold in /poison to affect bosses.

No, since ish 7. It's really annoying too. stone tankers running rooted AND granite armor get held by her regularly.

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That's part of the problem. They take so freaking long to get their 'core' defensive powers. Made a rad/rad, and it was soo painful trying to get the two toggle debuffs. When I was running a rad/rad defender the set was a joy to play. Corrupters to me take too long to get the fun powers.

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Defenders take too long to get their good blasts and when they do get them they don't make up for the wait to get them because defender base damage is so pitifully low. Not really the case with offensive support powers being secondaries on Corruptors.

[/ QUOTE ]It takes all kinds to make the world go round, Turbo. Some people find the support powers more fun, others find the blasts more fun. No one's fun is more "right" than anyone else's in this case.

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Apparently you missed the part where Madam admitted to not ever playing a corruptor at all then claiming defenders are better in a topic comparing damage/support capabilities between defenders and corruptors and controllers. If you haven't played one of each of those well past lvl 20 then you really don't have a leg to stand on in this topic.

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Apparently you missed where I said I HAVE played, and do play corrupters, just takes too long to get the yummy powers I really want so I haven't gotten one past 12, while many of my defenders are in the 30's. To me, the blasts are the gravy that helps you solo, not the powers to play the char for. As such the buff set takes too long to unlock to me.

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It seems that he rarely even uses Fire Breath anymore. So much for AE damage <_<

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Mine still uses fire breath frequently. In fact (JOY!) he's using more then just the swords in melee range now.

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I have seen some use the arguement that each set should have a weakness...fair enough. You say defence's weakness is CDF (haven't ever seen this happen or seen anyone curse it in general play, but i'll take your word for it),

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I have seen it, frequently in fact. Back in issue four Madam Enigma would die quite frequently. So often in fact that I was in constant debt from level 5 to level 33 or so. Yes, you read that right. For 28 levels there wasn't a single moment when Madam Enigma didn't have debt. Practicly everything out there debuffs defense. And they do so quickly. How quickly? An average of 7.5 defense per hit of most attacks out there. This quickly chips away your defense. And if something has flashbang grenades? That's a -30 defense. A single quicksand was pretty much entirely negating /sr's full capabilities.

By comparison, I just ran a few missions against mobs I know have -regen and use it frequently. Without using instant healing, they couldn't completely shut down my regen rate. Oh yes, and reconstitution can't be affected by things that reduce your ability to heal others. Only by reduction in one's ability to be healed. Of which there's dang few things out there.

How much regen did I retain? Well, /poison debuffs as used by an enemy mob reduced me from 17.41 health per second to 6 or so health per second. Keep in mind that's with health, fast healing, and integration as my only sources of regen right now. I'll have to make a custom mission with things like dark miasma being used to test their ability to nuke my regeneration, but so far I'm only seeing one real issue.

That issue would be the freaking level 20 arc that marks the last contact mission set where you fight Vahzilok. Yes, I'm talking about the wasting disease temp power. The power that pretty much shuts down all regeneration you have access to, and nearly completely shuts down endurance recovery. Even that didn't really stop me with my /regen. -Recharge doesn't stop me (although it can make me sweat a little at times). I just have to time when I use my heals more.

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Umm you still don't get it. The idea is to not need IOs.

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Then congradulations, Regen doesn't need IO's. Not unless your trying to do things solo which were never intended to be done solo. Pylons? Intended to be fought by a team, so of course you'll need IO'd builds to pull soloing one off. AV's/GM's? Again, intended to be fought by a team (or six) so of course you'll need to IO out your build to solo them. Soloing a TF? Once again, not intended to be done. TF's are balanced around a TEAM of the minimum required players. If your trying to solo them, of course you'll need all the IO set bonuses you can get. Fighting +5 (or higher) enemies? Wow that was so not intended. Purple Patch anyone?

In short, unless your going for the insane stuff that was never intended, you do NOT need more then SO's and what /regen already has.

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I reckon youve got a point with Force Fields, Turbo. If a team is never close to dying for whatever reason, then a FF-er isn't going to bring much to the mix because it is the most specialised set of all.

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Have you never saved a team's but by turning on Repulsion Field or Force Bubble and running around as a knockback/repel machine and grabbing all the aggro and then going into PFF?

If not, I pity you, because it's AWESOME. Gives the team just enough time to regroup and recover.

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I know that unless I can find a FF defender with force bubble, I wont even attempt the last mission of Croatea's second contact. Too easy to fail if you don't have someone making sure enemies can't get near the stones. Especially with people who think bonfire is a "must use constantly near the portal" power.

How? Ok, here's my tray setups. I'll go from top to bottom for tray position 1 through 10. So for example numpad 1 is bound to tray one slot one.

Tray One
numpad 1=attack my target
numpad 2=follow
numpad 3=stay
numpad 4=aggressive
numpad 5=defensive
numpad 6=passive
numpad 7=patron offensive ability/vet attack
numpad 8=patron offensive ability/vet attack
numpad 9=patron offensive ability/vet attack
numpad 0=heal self/vet attack

(notice the last four change depending on the character)

Tray Two
1=debuff power
2=debuff power
3=debuff power
4=debuff power
5=debuff power/aid other
6=debuff power
7=debuff power
8=debuff power
9=debuff power/oraboras portal
0=read fortune/rez power

Tray Three
control+1=combat travel power (hover/combat jumping)/sprint
control+2=travel power
numpad /=summon tier 1
numpad *=summon tier 2
numpad -=summon tier 3
left arrow=level 6 pet upgrade
right arrow=level 32 pet upgrade
down arrow=patron shield/jump jet
up arrow=primary special power (smoke flash/repair/gang war)
numpad period=rest

Beyond that, I have stamina, or not. Numpad + and numpad enter switch tray one either forward or back. This way I can set up for example a "personal attacks" tray and a "I'm in RV" tray which includes heavy control macros.

(PS: I don't actually use temp powers, I collect them)

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D4 Defender + Dark Watcher's -recharge proc

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Ok, I know a D3 defender is Dark Miasma/Dark Blast with the darkness epic pool... But what the heck is a D4 defender?!

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I agree fully with Madam.

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OMG! The world is going to end! Someone actually agrees with me! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!!!!111!!!!ELEVENTY ONE ONE ONE!!!

I'll try to put it simply.

Kelds=awesome sauce for yourself

SoA=awesome sauce for the team

Both are great, both are crunchy with chewy centers, but both are awesome in different ways.

Neither are intended to be Epic in power (although warshades or full teams of SoA do achieve that). Instead their epic in storyline. Weather you agree or not as to the quality of the storylines, you gotta admit their epic. A single coherent storyline from levels 1 through 50 is EPIC.

I will mention that SoA storylines are more coherent then keld storylines. Sometimes on my WS the arcs don't seem related to the previous arcs outside of dealing with council, again.

And yet, I've seen builds for /regen AV soloers. I don't personally build to solo AV's, but I know it can be done. Here's my thoughts on it.

Regen has no built in mitigation to improve via IO set bonues and pool powers? Try regeneration. Sure using sets to boost regen may not work for it, but try tacking on defense. Just messing around, I did pretty good with a build using combat jumping and maneuvers to raise ranged and aoe defense (ignoring melee defense). I ended with 30% or so in each. And that was a build designed with keeping recharge slotting up there, as well as ensuring damage dealing powers were well slotted for acc/damage.

Someone who wanted to could probably cobble together a build for regen with 25 to 30% melee, ranged, and aoe defense. It's not soft capped, but with high regen rates it wouldn't have to be. It'd just have to slow down incoming damage. Outside of one shot kills, I don't see the problem here. And if your trying for defense, you probably racked up some resistances too. That lessens the chance of one shot deaths. As does having dull pain.

Screen space? I only have two power trays showing. The first is for pet controls and personal attacks (read Vet attacks and patron powers), the second is my debuff secondary. The third tray is hidden, and has every slot bound for easy reach from the numpad.

I've looked at the numpad binds, and they look really freaking sweet. Only thing is, I use the numpad for personal offense powers too. Might look at them again though to see if it'd leave 3 spaces open.

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I'd maybe take CT:O to start with for that reason, but I'd respec out of it later on; there's just too many good (read: better) powers to try and squeeze into a SoA build.

I'm always a little depressed when I see builds that have both CT:O and Wolf Spider Armor (especially if they also had the sense to take Crab Spider Armor Upgrade and Fortification), but no TT:M.

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My build will likely forgo patron powers, so I'll have enough room for wolf spider armor (more resistance/mez protection) and CT:O. Just too many VEAT powers I want more then a patron pool. I'll be forced to take a patron, but I don't have to use the pool.

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This thread was worth a chuckle.

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QF+1

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QF another +1

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I don't, but I do know that outside of oil slick, my level 18 tanker does comparable damage to my higher level defenders usually. Really sad too, but then I don't play defenders for the damage.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, that was what I was thinking. My tankers massively outdo my defenders for damage. I have primarily offense-oriented tankers, though.

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It's sad cause right now my ice/mace tanker is slotted 1 ACC/2 END.