Muon_Neutrino

Defender's don't have an 'increased secondary effect theme', at least in the sense of it being an immutable design rule. When a blast set has better secondary effects than for other ATs, it's simply because defenders have better modifiers for said effect.

Notice that defenders don't get a higher inherent accuracy bonus for archery, assault rifle, and dual pistols; that's because there's no such thing as an archetype modifier for accuracy bonuses. They also don't get better endurance drain in electric blast because all ATs have the same modifier strength for that effect. In general, secondary effects just use the modifier of the AT to determine strength, and that ought to hold for fire blast's DoT. When fire comes to defenders, I will be very surprised if the secondary DoT is somehow changed to not use the usual defender damage modifier.

What is -60% regen going to do? Against anything with enough HP for it to actually be a noticable effect, it's going to be resisted by something like 85%+; archvillains won't even notice. Meanwhile against even a boss, you're talking about debuffing something with around 5 hp/s worth of regen. It's just not going to have any real effect. Grab the -dam interface if you actually want a debuff that's uncommon and also does something useful.

Honestly, I have to agree with DarkCurrent. I don't really care what they may be planning for later. 'Soon(tm)' isn't especially reassuring when everyone but you is getting something - we've waited long enough for Illusion, dang it!

I want to know *why* illusion can't be proliferated *now* - if everyone else is getting something, there better be a darn good reason, and no, 'Soon(tm)' doesn't count. If we're getting it eventually anyway, why *can't* we get it now? And if they're *not* planning to give it to us, well...

.... I love proliferation. And yet somehow all I feel about this is 'meh'.

No ninjitsu scrappers? I suppose the need to replace caltrops with something else might violate the 'no art assets' rule, but surely there could have been *something* they could swap in? No rad masterminds? *NOTHING* for doms? I mean, sure you've got plans, but can't you toss us illusion as a bone for now? Soon(tm) isn't especially comforting when everyone got something except us. No broadsword tanks? No traps controllers? Energy aura but *not* energy melee for scrappers? And somehow they managed to finally give me the 'maximum spiky silliness' combo of spines and ice armor on the same character... on the one melee AT that can't have damage auras.

I swear, how the heck do they keep proliferating things and manage to keep missing the ones I want? Especially when, in the case of doms, there isn't anything *left* to be proliferated *except* the set I want?!? At least I can make my emp/fire defender now.

Hmm. Looking back a ways in the pylon time thread, a fire/rad controller soloed one and there was some discussion of -regen. They must have some resistance to that effect, because controller LR (-500% regen) only dropped a pylon's regen by ~65%. Assuming that represents a pylon having resistance to -regen, that'd be ~87% resistance - about the same as a max level AV. If that's the case it would take ~800 -regen to stop one, so the real question would be 'what percentage of the time did the cataphract only have one stack of -regen on the pylon?' This might have to be decided with something like herostats, if it can track pet damage.

Ninjitsu scrappers, please......

And illusion doms, fire/fire defenders, broadsword tanks, rad masterminds, etc, etc. I'm sick of having so many concepts that I can't roll yet.

The answer to 'typed or positional defence?' for melee armor sets is to go with the kind of defense the set already has. Since you use whichever applicable type or position you have the most of against an attack, there's no point in stacking typed defense on a positional defense armor set.

Typed defense:
Ice armor
Invulnerability
Stone armor
Willpower
Energy aura

Positional defense:
Shield
Super reflexes
Ninjitsu

Other:
Electric (no defense)
Dark (minor +def (all) in cloak of darkness, no other defense)
Fire (no defense)
Regen (no defense)

So for sets which already have defense, you want to grab more of the same kind. For sets which have no defense (or dark, which has a minor amount of defense to everything), if you want to stack defense on their other mitigation you're free to go for whichever kind of defense you want.

Note that typed defense sets often have a psi hole - invul, ice, and energy have no psi defense or resistance - and that there is no such thing as toxic typed defense. So, if you're building up typed defense, most people just go for smashing/lethal, energy/negative, and fire/cold defense. Also, stone and ice don't have defense to fire/cold by default, so there's not much point in trying to build those types of defense on them (and fire/cold attacks are less common than many other types, as well).

Performance shifter proc: 20% chance for 10 end, every 10 seconds. That's 0.2 end/s. If you're comparing it to a 3rd level 50 endmod, stamina is 0.4165 end/s. 2 level 50 endmods get you up to about 1.8x enhancement, or about 0.75 end/s. A third gets you to about 2x, or about .83 end/s, for a difference of perhaps 0.08 end/s - the performance shifter proc is better.

Unless you were assuming I was suggesting replacing the second level 50 endmod with the proc? That'd be pretty silly, and not what I was suggesting he do.

For endurance usage, the recovery uniques and the performance shifter proc are definitely worth it. Between all 3 you'd be adding another ~.85ish end/s recovery, which is fairly significant. Aside from that, look into +max end bonuses. Not as common as +recovery, but each percent of +max end also multiplies your recovery in addition to giving you a larger cushion before you run out (the +end accolades are also nice). Partial eradication sets (frankenslot the remaining slots) in burn and tremor are a nice place to start, you can also stick a pair of mocking beratement in taunt, and impervium armor is another, albeit expensive, option. Also, crushing impact in your ST attacks is a nice mixture of good set bonuses and nice endurance reduction, and is only an uncommon set.

If you're patient you can cash out your merits and any alignment merits for whatever will sell for the most on the market and use the proceeds to buy the procs/etc for as cheap as you can - this will probably be the cheapest method, but take longer. Alternatively, you can just earn enough regular/alignment merits to buy outright whatever you're looking for.

In my opinion, weave would only be worth it if you're going to be stacking significant defense. If you don't already have (or are planning to get) large amounts of defense from sets, I don't think weave is worth the endurance drain. Fireball, on the other hand, seems tailor made to complete a nice AoE trifecta with tremor and burn. For the last power, hasten is nice but you are correct about the end crash. I'd almost be tempted to take temperature protection at 49 - less for the resistances than for the protection from slows and a place to put another -KB (regarding -KB, it's my opinion that a fire or dark tank should have 3 -KB ios).

IMO, if you're paired with a controller or defender, especially an extremely low offense one like an ice/emp, you want an offensive powerset combo. An ice/emp is contributing basically no damage until they hit the 40s, so you want to be able to kill enough for the both of you.

I would take either fire or shield primaries, for the offense. In either case, with an emp keeping fortitude up on you, you will be basically invincible against any reasonable opposition - fort will cap your defense as soon as you both get SOs if you're shield, or give you a very nice layer of defense on top of your resistance if you're fire - and that doesn't even include the mitigation from his primary or the rest of the empathy set.

If you're a stone tank, all his mitigation will be massively overkill. In fact, in that situation, I'd feel totally useless as a controller since you very obviously wouldn't need my help. Rolling something like fire or shield would at least give him some reason to use the heals occasionally. Meanwhile, all that offense you're packing can be put to the best use with him keeping you upright. To that end, I'd probably go flat out offense and grab the fire secondary as well. Two very good PBAoEs plus something like burn or shield charge would dish out plenty of carnage.

If you do decide to go this way, though, your friend will have to carry some of the mitigation load, so they will need to be aware that you might not be quite as invincible on your own as they might be used to seeing.

And an illusion dom would be probably the *only* dom which, on SOs, wouldn't need to use gobs of purple insps to kill a single PToD EB. That *alone* would be worth the price of admission.

From what I know about IOs, the teleport stealth should not be applying to the pets. IO procs like this generally target the caster, as can be seen in the data entry. It also *affects* teammates, but they aren't the caster.

The reason the trick is working isn't that the stealth proc is affecting the ninjas, it's that grant invisibility doesn't give your ninjas *stealth*, it gives them *full invisibility*. Checking out the concealment pool, note that stealth lists '+35 StealthRadius', while invisibility and grant invisibility both list '+55 StealthRadius'. As the wiki notes, maximum PvE perception is 54 feet for regular foes, so the +55 stealth is enough for complete invisibility against anything that doesn't have some sort of bonus. You yourself have regular stealth (+35) and the proc (+30), so you are also invisible. Your ninjas shouldn't have the proc but with grant invis they're at +55 stealth, so they're invisible anyway - so all you need for stealthing things with pets out is just plain old grant invisibility.

Sorry to rain on the parade.

Chain fences is one of the few dominator AoE immobs I'd suggest taking. It's not that it immobs (although that can be useful), it's that it drains 10% end per hit. Slot it for endmod and it can significantly reduce the time it takes to sap a group to 0 end.

I love that chick's videos so much - partly because I dabble in math myself, but mostly because they're just awesome. I just wish she updated more often!

I'm going to offer a contrary suggestion to Neo - while taking tough, weave, combat jumping, cloak of darkness, and maneuvers (along with your regular dark toggles, cloak of fear, and a steadfast) might get you to ~20% def and ~50% S/L resistance, even with everything 2 slotted for end you're still burning *more than your entire base recovery* running toggles. On a non-50 SO'd character, that is just not viable.

Dark's survivability doesn't really come from passive means - the resistance is more or less just there to give your other means of mitigation time to work. The real problem is that your other types of mitigation tend to be slot and endurance hungry. Dark regen's only real competition for 'best heal in the game' is stygan circle, and even that's debatable. The problem is that it very very quickly leaves you without endurance, especially if you don't have enough slots for endredux in it. Similarly, cloak of fear has a very high end cost and also requires lots of accuracy, to boot.

As such, the best way to improve your survivability, in my opinion, is actually to get your endurance under control. As such, I'm going to recommend a few specific enhancements. While you certainly don't need to dive right into full-blown sets of inventions before 50 if you don't want to, there are a few specific ones you should get your hands on immediately. Specifically, 'theft of essence: chance for +end', 'performance shifter: chance for +end', 'numina's convalescence: +regen/+recovery', and 'miracle: +recovery'. These can be slotted into dark regen, stamina, and health respectively (this will require an extra slot in stam and health, but it's worth it). These tend to be somewhat on the expensive side on the market, but you should be able to get them with reward and/or alignment merits.

What this should do is let you have enough endurance to be able to 1) use dark regen when it's recharged instead of when you have enough end, 2) be able to actually *run* cloak of fear, and 3) not run out of end before you can beat them up, as long as you do put endredux in your attacks and toggles. Six slot dark regeneration if you haven't already; apart from the proc if you're on SOs I'd slot it 1 acc, 3 endredux, 1 rech - it already heals a third of your health per target, so it doesn't really need heal enhancement. You can swap an end for another recharge if that doesn't tax your blue bar too much. I'd also consider taking tough - while you don't want *tons* of extra toggles, more S/L resistance is probably the single simplest thing you can do to boost survivability. To help pay for the end cost, I'd skip cloak of shadows - combat jumping already covers your immob hole and is much cheaper to run (and you can put a 'karma: knockback protection' IO in it, another single IO you should buy immediately).

Basically, you need to have enough resistance for dark regen to be able to keep you alive, and you need a well slotted dark regen and enough endurance for that to work. To do so, you really don't need a huge amount of IOs - you can quite happily save the full set slotting for level 50 if you just grab the 4 or 5 single key IOs that will make the biggest difference. Just run tips and accumulate those alignment merits, and along with any regular merits you've saved up from arcs/etc they shouldn't be too hard to get.

I understand why you want the pools you do, but I have to say that I *extremely* strongly disagree with your choice. Stealthing missions is nice. The medicine pool is nice. Recall friend is nice. None of them even remotely compares to the utility of going from 40% defense to 45% defense. Thanks to the way defense scales, maneuvers *doubles* the mitigation you provide to the team. Honestly, forgoing maneuvers probably reduces your mitigation by more than having aid other increases it.

Fortunately, there's a way to fix this. You don't need the concealment pool to stealth missions - you've got personal force field. With PFF putting you massively over the softcap to everything under the sun and boosting your resistances to boot, it doesn't matter if they can see you or not. Toss a stealth proc in fly if you want to ensure that fewer of them notice you and that they lose track of you sooner, and you definitely won't need concealment. As it stands you need to run stealth to cap to ranged - dropping those three concealment powers for some leadership (I suggest maneuvers, assault or tactics as you prefer, and venge for that LoTG) lets you softcap everyone for about the same end cost, plus you have another beneficial toggle you can turn on when needed and venge to boot.

Besides that, there would be a few tweaks I'd make. First off, I'd definitely swap the miracle +recovery into health instead - if it's in aid other, it'll only be active for 120 seconds after each use of that power, so you couldn't get any benefit from it solo. Second, I'd swap the other miracle in health for the numina's proc - it's a net gain of 7.5% recovery. Aim doesn't need 3 recharges, and you've got six 1.88% AoE def bonuses, so that should be a pair of slots freed up that can go toward beefing up maneuvers' slotting and adding that stealth proc. You can also put another LotG rech in PFF's base slot since the defense offered is already so massive.

My fire armor/stone melee (tank, not brute, but whatever) is basically 'volcano chick'. Latent mutant powers, caught in an eruption, etc, etc, typical cheesy superhero background. IMO something having to do with lava in some way is one of the most obvious choices, since lava is basically the combination of the two sets.

Poison trap isn't interruptible. As for the KB, while I will admit I've never played bots to a high level, if you're first into the spawn is he really knocking everything away from you within the first 3-4 seconds? Poison trap takes a bit more than 2 seconds to cast and in my experience goes off within a second after that if you lay it right next to an enemy, so unless he's *really* quick on the trigger with the knockback it'd be hard to knock them away before it goes off.

It definitely is very good at killing regen, but I really don't think that the hold isn't useful. Besides, it isn't too hard to get plenty of hold enhancement in there anyway if you use IOs (and you can get some accuracy too so that the hold hits).