Muon_Neutrino

I have to respecfully disagree - I really don't like the new music. The hero fanfare felt heroic. This music feels like it escaped from a star trek movie.

For warshades, why *not* take it? It's not like we're usually horribly strapped for power choices - slots are usually the tight ones. Sure, it doesn't always do anything that you couldn't do fairly easily, but it'll still be nice to take a step out of the 'current zone->ouro->PI' or 'current zone->skyway->faultline' type trips, where the target zone isn't accessible by train. It'll also be nice if you're currently *in* one of those less accessible zones - you can teleport straight to your destination instead of going to ouro or somewhere first. I know *I'm* planning to take it, it's not like I have anything else important to take in the 40s.

Power boost's description is outdated. It no longer affects KB magnitude. Other than that, EM has one KB power, and it's a single target one. It hurls *a guy* across the room, which is only disruptive if you spend all your time using it on people and don't kill any of them. As a 'get out of my face' tool it's extremely useful, but there's certainly no requirement to use it enough to be disruptive (and it's not a damage tool, by level 4 you should have at least three other powers that are more useful as attacks).

Keep in mind that electric armor gets protection from endurance effects from *two* sources - grounded and static shield. Grounded gives you protection from endurance drains (86.5% at level 50) but no protection from -recovery debuffs. However, static shield gives protection from both drains and -recovery, and its protection passes 100% at level 31.

In other words, grounded isn't actually necessary for end drain/-recov protection. Since you cap energy resistance with just charged armor and conductive field, the actual usefulness of the power is the negative resistance, the -KB, and the -immob. Depending on the rest of your build, you may be able to get away with skipping it (CJ for -immob, IOs for -KB, and ignore the negative since it's not too common) if you're really tight on power slots.

One slight nit: you mention that adrenalin boost can negate nuke/etc recovery crashes, but don't suggest any endmod slotting. Many such crashes are -1000% recovery, so at base AB's 800% recovery isn't going to do the job. I personally like to put one endmod/x IO in there, which gets the recovery bonus just over 1000%. As you mention, it's certainly a fringe use of the power, but if you're going to suggest it as a possiblity I'd think you'd want to mention the slotting required for it to work.

Yeah, I don't think those numbers can be considered accurate in general. There's been about 7 and a third years since launch, about 64000 hours. If you've played, for example, 13000+ hours as Turg reports, then you'dve been playing roughly a fifth of the TOTAL time passed since launch. That's almost 5 hours a day, every day, for the past 7+ years. That just isn't feasable. Which sucks, because it's an interesting question.

There are character transfers, but they cost real money, so I imagine most people aren't blowing $ to move their tanker around to follow the event from server to server. I believe most people either have tanks on many of the servers, or else just wait around until it comes to a server where they do have tanks.

Hmm, my personal dislikes:

For archetypes, it's brutes, stalkers, and masterminds.

Brutes, I just can't stand dealing with fury. Funny thing, I tend to *play* like a brute on my tanks/scrappers anyway, in terms of 'top speed always gogo killkillkill', if I can, but it's fun to me because it's on my own time. I can go fast when I want to, and if I feel like it I can stop to check my inventory or chat or whatever without penalizing myself. As soon as you put in a game mechanic tying my damage to activity level, staying active becomes a chore I have to do rather than something fun I *want* to do.

Stalkers, I simply have no interest in the signature stealth strike mechanic, and the AT gives up too much in exchange for it. If I don't care about AS/hide/etc, I'm basically playing a lower HP scrapper missing a couple powers out of his primary/secondary (and I especially feel the missing AoEs). It's a pity, because I've been waiting to be able to use /nin for a long time, but I'll just keep waiting until scrappers can use it (amusingly enough, it's looking like I'll get the other powerset I was waiting for for that character (SJ) before I get /nin even though /nin's been in existence for years).

Masterminds, managing the pets is just too much work for my taste. Without specific direction they're just too retarded, but I always found myself neglecting the rest of the things I was doing when I spent time trying to keep the pets doing something useful. Maybe someday the AI will get an upgrade or I'll find the perfect powerset combo for me, but for now I'll leave them on the shelf.

As for powersets, there are a few. These are the ones I actually have some sort of objection to, rather than just 'I don't happen to have made one'.

Electric blast - almost completely useless gimmick and no third blast. Devices - what is the point of this set, anyway? Ice control - if I want a control set that's incapable of negating an alpha, I know who I'll call. Spines - the graphics aren't too bad nowadays, but the ugly animations are still a deal-breaker. Kinetic melee - until concentrated strike gets some sort of alternate animation, I won't play it. Ice and stone armor and energy aura - I made a costume for a reason, I'd like to see it.

And, finally, gravity control - I want to like this set. I want to like it so badly. Concept-wise, it's perfect. But until it can actually do its job, I just can't use it.

I know it's a longshot as it's not even live yet, but the new menu music on beta is driving me nuts. I really don't like it. Does anyone know the correct path/name/etc to silence it?

I have a second build on my shield tank, for hami. Since hami's such a unique encounter, mechanics-wise, set bonuses (and even enhancement percentages for most powers) just aren't very important; getting max slotted taunt, a ranged attack, and fly is what's actually relevant about a second build, so I didn't need to get anything but SOs for basically everything but taunt.

Otherwise, I don't use second builds at all. It's just too much of a pain in the rear to slot out a second build - more in terms of time and effort than money - and I just don't see any particular need. If I can't make a build I'm happy with for general use, then either I haven't tried hard enough or I need to rethink the character.

To initially unlock the patron pools, you need to be full villain. You won't be offered the first patron arc that you need to complete to unlock them if you're a rogue. However, once you've completed the arc and unlocked the pools, it doesn't matter what alignment you become. You could even go full hero, do a respec, and still have the patron pools available.

With the caveat previously mentioned that a lot of this is personal preference, this is a very rough outline of what I'd do for a plant/storm controller.

I've taken the most important powers; the empty spots are user's choice. Travel at 12 and 14, of course, and you can move hasten down to 12 if you want to use super speed. The rest of the empty slots can get some of the optional plant or storm powers, or useful pool powers - just note that it's going to be tough to find slots for them, so don't choose things that need lots of slotting. On my controller, I took O2 boost, spirit tree, and recall friend in those slots.

Even though there are open spaces, vines is left until 30 since you won't have slots for it until then. Despite that, it's actually a moderately important power. The thing about plant is that, while seeds is overwhelmingly powerful, the set doesn't have another good 'every-spawn' control. Thus, if you run into a situation where you need to control a second group while seeds is recharging (usually because of over-aggro, I find), vines is a good way to delay that group for a bit while you wait for seeds to come back or get into position to neuter them with storm powers.

Despite the usual verdict of 'optional', I took entangle at 6. Not only is it the most useful power available at that level, it's (at least in my opinion) key to not losing your sanity if you try to solo. While roots is much better than other controller AoE immobs and makes a good area damage power, you'll still want to be able to kill single targets. Trying to whittle down an annoying LT with just strangler (probably not slotted for damage, to boot) is going to be very annoying. As well, since immobilize is one of the only mezzes that works through purple triangles, it's a key tool for boss fights.

Steamy mist is another unobtrusive power that is actually important. The thing about seeds is, while it's incredibly powerful in most respects, it's got a pretty short range. If you're trying to actually get the whole group in seeds' cone, it's very easy to get too close to the nearest ones, aggro them, and take an alpha from the group before you can get them confused. Steamy mist's stealth, while not enough to make you completely invisible, is definitely enough to prevent this early aggro if you're careful.

Running just on SOs, endurance is going to be an issue. I managed to get some endredux into most of the really expensive things, but seeds, entangle, and strangler in particular are without. If you find yourself running dry too often, you could try replacing a confuse, damage, or hold respectively in those powers with an endredux.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Basic plant-storm: Level 48 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Plant Control
Secondary Power Set: Storm Summoning
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Fire Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Strangler -- Acc(A), Acc(3), Hold(5), Hold(7), RechRdx(13), RechRdx(19)
Level 1: Gale -- Acc(A)
Level 2: Roots -- Acc(A), Acc(3), Dmg(5), Dmg(15), EndRdx(25), EndRdx(37)
Level 4: Snow Storm -- EndRdx(A)
Level 6: Entangle -- Acc(A), Dmg(7), Dmg(11), Dmg(15)
Level 8: Seeds of Confusion -- Acc(A), Acc(9), Conf(9), Conf(11), RechRdx(13), RechRdx(25)
Level 10: Steamy Mist -- EndRdx(A)
Level 12: [Empty]
Level 14: [Empty]
Level 16: Freezing Rain -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(17), RechRdx(17), EndRdx(40)
Level 18: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(19), RechRdx(31)
Level 20: Hurricane -- EndRdx(A), ToHitDeb(21), ToHitDeb(23), ToHitDeb(31)
Level 22: [Empty]
Level 24: [Empty]
Level 26: Carrion Creepers -- Acc(A), Acc(27), EndRdx(27), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(34)
Level 28: [Empty]
Level 30: Vines -- Acc(A), Acc(31), Hold(34), Hold(34), RechRdx(43), RechRdx(46)
Level 32: Fly Trap -- Acc(A), Dmg(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(33)
Level 35: Tornado -- Dmg(A), Dmg(36), EndRdx(36), EndRdx(36), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37)
Level 38: Lightning Storm -- Dmg(A), Dmg(39), EndRdx(39), EndRdx(39), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(40)
Level 41: Fire Ball -- Acc(A), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), EndRdx(43), RechRdx(43)
Level 44: Fire Blast -- Acc(A), Dmg(45), Dmg(45), Dmg(45), EndRdx(46), RechRdx(46)
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(23)

Just downloaded the standard version of the pack, apparently the 'stalker's guile' and 'command of the mastermind' texture files contain textures with misspelled names (or else the file names themselves are misspelled), according to the error messages CoH threw when trying to load (in both the base and 'alt' directories). I removed the offending files and the rest of it seems to be working fine, just thought I'd let you know about the bug. Thanks for the pack, by the way!

As for non-positional attacks, examples of such attacks that players have access to would be blind from illusion control, plus every single power from mind control (they are typed solely as psionic_attack). Additionally, singularity's attacks are untyped and non-positional both, so they ignore both typed *and* positional defense (basically everything but insps and PFF). And mobs using these powers also benefit from this, hence SR having a 'non-positional psi' hole (really it has a 'non-positional' hole, but basically all of that is psi).

I'll probably be rerolling my mothballed 20ish grav/storm controller into grav/time, since as a 'relativity controller' that's what he should have been all along. I may reroll my ma/sr into a sj/sr since sj fits a self taught fighter better, although really the powerset I'm waiting for there is scrapper /nin. And I might reroll my 20ish storm/dark and/or dark/psi defender to use fire blast. Not rerolling any 50s.

One thing about tanker SR that you don't get as much on scrapper/brute, is that while you still don't have much in the way of resistances you *do* get a much larger HP pool to absorb the hits that get through. Leaving aside incarnate stuff, that ought to help mitigate the 'sudden death' syndrome. While that's certainly not something unique to SR, what is nice is that the higher HP should make it harder for the scaling resistances to be leapfrogged by a single huge hit. It'll still have trouble with really hard hitting AVs, though.

On the other hand, it'll be the easiest set in the entire game to hit the incarnate softcap on, so it's got that going for it.

I would really dislike if they reduced nuke damage in exchange for making them crashless. Yeah, they would probably be 'better', but they wouldn't be anywhere near as fun.

I don't have the AoE factor and damage/recharge formulae available at the moment, but if I recall correctly the nukes actually don't do as much damage as the formula says they should (on the other hand, the actual end *cost* (ignoring the crash) is, if I recall correctly, not as much as it should be). If they remove the crash, honestly all I think would need doing is somewhat increasing the 'normal' endurance costs. If a scrapper is allowed to BU-SC-LR for somewhere between 400 and 1000 damage (depending on how close they enemy is to the center) every 45 seconds with no crash, I don't think it's unreasonable to let a blaster aim-BU-nova for about 1100 damage 4 times less frequently with no crash.