Muon_Neutrino

I wouldn't call it a red/blue disparity so much as I'd call it a stalker/everyone else disparity.

Brutes are more or less in the same boat as scrappers and tanks when it comes to endurance recovery tools - they lack regen and ice armor, but neither scrappers nor tanks have energy aura. For all other sets with end recovery in them, brutes already have them.

Dominators don't have end recovery in their primaries because control sets don't get them, but their secondaries do have end recovery powers in two sets. Also, they can get end recovery in their patron pools.

In terms of buff/debuff sets, the only sets with significant self +end powers are radiation, kinetics, empathy, and cold dom. Villains get pain dom instead of empathy, but aside from that, corrs have access to all three sets. They can also get end recovery tools in their patron pools. Mastermind's don't, but in the case of rad and kin, I'd be willing to bet the delay in proliferation is more due to worries over the power level of those sets than about their end recovery tools. Cold I presume they just haven't gotten around to proliferating yet.

Stalkers are the only ones who really get shafted, and this appears to be a deliberate design decision. My personal guess is that's it's part of an attempt to encourage quick fighting rather than sustained scrapping, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it's not a redside issue, it's a stalker issue. You'd be better off asking 'why the stalker end recover disparity', the rest of redside isn't really any worse off than blueside.

Hehe, I've been tempted to transfer a character or two to freedom before the free transfers end for exactly that reason. The rest of me soon steps in and says 'no', but it'd certainly be fun.

At low levels, the damage scales for the various ATs haven't yet diverged. While later on a scrapper will be doing 40% more damage than a tanker with an equivalent attack, at low levels, they will do about the same, so this is part of it.

The other part is that dual blades attacks are for the most part of the faster, lighter variety. Mace and axe's first three attacks have recharges of 4s, 8s, and 10s, compared to dual blades' 3s, 5s, 6s. I don't know what you observed (perhaps end problems kept the scrapper from firing attacks as fast as he should have, or maybe you had more recharge slotted than him, or maybe his connection/comp was just laggy), but in general, your attacks were hitting harder because his (should have been) recharging faster.

At higher levels that won't always hold true. Early on, tanks and scrappers share the default damage modifier of 1.0, but by the early 20s, they've settled into their final values of 0.8 and 1.125, respectively. Comparing scrapper dual blades to tanker battle axe at that point, the corresponding ST attacks do about the same final damage despite the scrapper's faster recharges. That is assuming identical slottings, individual slotting preferences will of course factor into it.

The final difference is that you're a shield defense character and he's not. Presumably you had against all odds running? If so, you were getting damage buffs that the scrapper wasn't, which also would have contributed.

So the answer is, more or less, you picked a slower, (relatively) harder hitting melee set than he did, and you were both low enough level that the higher scrapper damage modifer hadn't kicked in enough yet to overcome the difference. You also may have had damage buffs from your offensively-oriented armor set that he didnt. They haven't buffed overall tanker damage recently, but contrary to popularly expressed ingame opinions, tanker damage really isn't too shabby to begin with.

Um, controllers? Not sure how you're doing that, unless this is a AE team and you're co-oping in the RWZ. Did you mean corruptors?

Regardless, by the time your mezzes wear off there usually shouldn't be so many enemies left that they're shooting your face off. If there are, something's wrong. Are you using seeds of confusion? That's plant's staple every-spawn control, and it *ought* to be lasting more than long enough to dispose of a spawn. If you're not using seeds, I could see where you'd be having problems. If you are using it, how is it slotted? Does it have at least 2 confuse and 2 recharge (with SOs, I would go 2 acc, 2 confuse, 2 rech)?

Basically, could you describe your current build and, in as much detail as possible how a fight usually goes for you, so that we can try to figure out what's going wrong?

Just wait until you hit 26 and get sleet. Drop that bad boy on a mob before you open up with your AoEs and the carnage will be even bigger - and it keeps you even safer, to boot, with the knockdown and extra slow it provides. Sleet is, in my opinion, the keystone power of the combination. Not as flashy as benumb, heat loss or the /ice rains, but it's a very nice reliable, strong, every-spawn mitigation and damage boosting power. It's the workhorse that never lets you down.

As an aside, the reason your damage feels so good is that, when they ported /ice to blasters, the devs didn't bother to make new pseudopets for ice storm and blizzard. Thus, these two powers summon the blaster version pseudopets - you are doing *blaster level damage* with ice storm (and, when you get it, blizzard). This is, indeed, as awesome as it sounds, as you have discovered. Not to mention that you get access to damage boosting powers that blasters don't get! Heat loss + Sleet + ice storm + blizzard = mobs? What mobs? And, to boot, if you are in range of enough heat loss buffs, you can even overcome the -recovery penalty of blizzard (fully endmod slotted, 8 will let you recover at somewhat less than your normal rate, 9 will negate the penalty entirely).

The combo does feel somewhat anemic early on, it is true. You don't get the good AoE stuff out of either of your sets until the 20s at the earliest. It does kinda suck having snow storm as your only AoE mitigation tool until 26, especially given the aggro it draws. But when you do get those upper level powers, oh my.

Edit: to give some perspective on how awesome blizzard and ice storm are, at level 50 their unenhanced damage numbers are approximately 501 and 117 damage, respectively. Defender nova, which is a good example of a 'standard' defender nuke, has an average unenhanced level 50 damage of 176. Blizzard does almost *three times as much damage* as a regular defender nuke - in fact, it does more damage than every *blaster* nuke except for itself, including inferno! As a bonus, blizzard also can knock things down while it's running, as well as carrying a 20% tohit debuff.

Meanwhile, ice storm does pretty much exactly 2/3rds as much damage as a regular defender nuke, for about one sixth the endurance and recharge time. The only drawback of these two powers is that they each take 15 seconds to deal their damage, but between their own slow, sleet's slow, sleet's knockdown, and blizzard's knockdown, are the enemies really going anywhere?

Super jump, super speed, teleport - any zone, any time, when used by a person with a 4 year old laptop.

I'm glad so many of my concepts work well with fly, because any of the faster travel powers cause enough of a framerate hit to seriously impede their use. I'm continually running into stuff with SS, missing my intended landing point with SJ, or falling from the sky with tele when my computer decides to hiccup. Ironically enough, despite their faster straight line speed, the other travel powers don't usually end up getting me to my destination any faster than fly - and with much more hassle along the way.

I would imagine that a large proportion of defenders can initiate fights - most of the debuff or control heavy sets can do it, at a minimum. Holding aggro, less so, but if you've got a team of solely blasters/defenders/controllers such that the defender actually has to initiate the fight, you're not likely to actually *need* to manage aggro as everything will be defeated or incapacitated in short order.

For me, personally, my FF/nrg is quite good at taking alphas and initiating combat. With softcapped ranged defense and a goodly amount of S/L resistance on top of that, he's remarkably hardy as long as the enemies don't close to melee. He can also cage a problem foe, or even take the first salvo from within PFF if warranted. His mez protection also means that he won't be shut down by a single lucky shot. Toss in repulsion bomb to knock the whole spawn on their rear as the rest of the team rushes in, and he can initiate fights quite easily.

My dark/psi is also perfectly capable of it, despite only being 30. Hell, he could do it from level 12, simply because fearsome stare really is that amazing. There simply is no alpha when that power is used, even bosses miss more often than not. Toss in any of his other mitigative abilities, and the mobs have no chance.

My storm/dark is ok at it, but not as much so as the rest of them. Freezing rain blunts return fire, but it doesn't completely negate it. To really do that, I have to get in close, immob them, and start pushing them around with hurricane. Teams don't always like that, though. He's not bad at it, but I'd rather let a meleer go in first.

You're looking at the wrong /em power to judge the set on - whirling hands has always been lackluster. It wasn't nerfed, it was just never very good in the first place. /Em's burst damage was always ST.

The only damage nerf to /em was the ET animation change (barrage was a buff). Yes, they increased the power's cast time by 1.5-2ish seconds (don't exactly remember the length of the old animation, but it was around 1s). It still hits like a truck. I think it's important to keep this in mind - exactly *one* power had its damage nerfed. The way many talk about the set, though, you'd think the devs had replaced every power with [Brawl]. It's still a plenty viable set (I have my gripes about how late the two heavy hitters come, but that's a separate issue). I would definitely wait until you get the best attacks before you judge it. It won't be an AoE powerhouse, but shield charge will help there, and I think you'll find the ST damage acceptable.

Regarding the toughness, I also wouldn't judge it too early. Shields on tanks is relatively easy to softcap, even on a budget. At that point, you *will* be outperforming the scrapper - and even before that, you have more HP, more resistances, and getting shield charge so much earlier helps with mitigation as well as offense.

If you're planning on doing another respec, I would definitely move some slots around. Psy wail doesn't need more than 4 slots, for example - with level 40 IOs, put in an acc/dam and 3 dam/rech and you get maxed damage, enough acc, and a good amount of recharge in only 4 slots.

I would drop psionic lance entirely. Even though you can probably get it off safely with all your defense, it's just not that good of a power. Especially since you are likely to need the slots, it just isn't worth the power pick in my opinion.

Do try to get all three of your single target blasts up to 6 slots. The big 2.5% defense bonus from thunderstrike isn't gained until 6, so you're missing out on the best bonus if you're sitting at 4 or 5 slots.

Your ally target shields don't need 6 slots. The best bonuses are gained for having 2, 3, and 4 enhancements slotted - the 5 and 6 slot bonuses are quite lackluster on LoTG. That's another 4 slots you can save for other powers. (this also lets you avoid the even more expensive end/rech and def/end/rech pieces, although only if you can afford the def/7.5% or use level 50 IOs, because otherwise the defense stat won't be maxed out).

Do you have mids? It'd be much easier to give you suggestions if we could see your entire build. If you don't I would suggest getting it (you can get it here) and posting the build you're considering respecing into, so that we can hammer out any problems before you use up another respec.

Your builds don't seem to have posted properly. They've all got all of their slots empty.

Just thought you'd like to know before too many people read the guide.

Yeah, willpower is a very good choice on just SOs. Shield takes quite a bit of investment to get up to willpower levels.

I agree with the others that kat or BS with willpower is a very good combination of toughness, ST, and AoE damage on a budget. With the way you don't need stamina with willpower, it frees up some extra power choices to take things like hasten or extra attacks to make up for the lesser recharge compared to an IO build. Or you can forgo epics to take stamina, tough, and weave, and become just about as hardy as a scrapper can get with just SOs. It works very well overall.

Don't skip power blast either, it's as powerful as many other sets' tier 3 blast nowadays. Really, from energy secondary I'd just skip whirling hands and sniper blast, everything else is useful (on a grav/ power boost is nice to pump up your otherwise slightly anemic AoE control).

A blapper is a blaster that makes a point of taking a secondary with good melee attacks and using them as much as possible. As far as making a blapper, basically just choose a melee-oriented secondary (/elec, /nrg, /fire (although that's more melee AoE...)) and go to town. A primary whose AoEs are primarily radial instead of cones helps, since it makes them easier to use in melee.

Now, actually *surviving* said lifestyle takes a mite more finesse... I'll let those a bit more experienced with blappers talk about that.

Given what we've just been told about going rogue, I wouldn't bother making a FF/ar if it'd just be a placeholder for a FF/dp. Since it appears that preordering GR will allow you to make dp and demon summoning characters early, and the announcement appears to suggest that this will be available around early march, I'd just wait a month and make the ff/dp then.

As far as I know, tough only increases resistance to all damage in PvP. In PvE it's only supposed to increase resistance to smashing/lethal. My guess is that it's a display bug, or you accidentally had the PvP info toggled on.

I would agree on not picking empathy. For a new player it really does gives a very limited view on what a defender's true capabilities are.

Sonic is one good choice, as has been suggested. It's not the most diverse set in terms of the types of buffs and debuffs it hands out (mostly just +res and -res, along with some anti-mez and liquefy), but it at least focuses on buffs and debuffs rather than healing. Only downside is that shielding the entire team every 4 minutes can be annoying for some people, and if you forget, people will probably gripe.

I think that dark miasma is another good choice. Dark has a large number of debuffs and controls to neuter enemy spawns, while also making them die faster and topping off any damage that leaks through with its heal. It can rez an entire team of allies at once, and even gets a sort of 'mini me' pet that backs up your abilities. Only real downside from the perspective of a new player is that you don't really get to experience the power of buffs.

Personally, though, I would recommend radiation emission. Rad has an even wider array of debuffs than dark, albeit without as much control, and also has a nice AoE buff that you don't have to spam on your teammates. It can also rez people (albeit one at a time), and also has a modest heal to back up its potent debuffs. It is a very nice all around primary that will get you used to a wide variety of defender abilities.

In terms of secondaries, I don't think the specific one you choose matters as much as simply actually using whatever secondary you do pick. Defenders certainly don't do as much damage as blasters, but that doesn't mean we can't contribute our part. Defenders can still toss out some AoEs to soften up the foes, or pick on a single target and keep him occupied until he goes down. As well, many blast sets have useful non-damage effects on the powers, from knockup, to -tohit, to slows, to -defense, to -resist, to mezzes, etc, etc. While these effects rarely need to be slotted for (it's usually a better idea to slot for damage, at least on powers which are primarily damage powers), they can still easily be felt. Dark blast's two AoEs, for example, can drop the tohit of a whole spawn by 15% or more even without any debuff slotting (while also rooting mobs in place). Many sets have single target controls, some have AoE soft controls. As long as you actually take, slot and use the good powers from whatever secondary you pick, the exact choice of secondary isn't too important, in my opinion. Pick whatever fits your theme or sounds the funnest. If you're unsure which powers in your chosen set are worthwhile or how to slot them, of course, you can still ask here.

Ahem.

ZOMGOMGOMOGMGOMGOMGOMG WHEEEEEEEE!

That is all.

Fire, I think more of the complaint is that you keep dragging mids into totally unrelated topics and people are getting sick of reading about it. Really, it isn't a physical requirement to belabor your hatred for mids every single time you post. One might almost begin to think you're intentionally trying to start arguments by carrying on in this manner. You're highly unlikely to convert most here to your position (especially presented in such a, frankly, contemptuous manner), so I have to wonder just what is the point of it?

I echo what DrMike has to say - the two most important bonuses to go for on a FF/ are ranged defense and recovery. Definitely do take maneuvers and an ancillary armor. Put red fortune in maneuvers and dispersion, thunderstrike in 3 ranged attacks (since it doesn't sound like you took all 4), the steadfast 3% in the ancillary armor, and then whatever else you need for the softcap (you can get some cheap ranged def by putting explosive strike in force bolt. 2 BoTZ in travel prereq/travel are another (albiet expensive) way to get some). Getting to the ranged softcap is an amazing experience - suddenly, between that and force bubble you become nigh invincible, as long as you have the recovery to keep up with those toggles.

At the moment? Spines and thorny assault are two.The horrible visuals are no more thanks to power customization (the metal spikes especially look pretty sweet), but the butt-ugly animations on ripper and impale remain. Until the animation customization that SS and MA recieved gets to spines/thorny assault, the sets will remain unused by me.

Another is super reflexes. I know the set is the most awesome thing since sliced bread if you can pile enough on to softcap it, but I just am sick unto death of trying to achieve that without sacrificing the rest of my build, given that I don't have hundreds of millions of inf to toss at the problem. I've had a MA/SR sitting at level 13 for over a year, and literally 8 or 9 versions of her build in mids, and I can't come up with one that softcaps without unacceptable sacrifices. Only place I'd play it is if they port it to tanks, since their higher values would make it trivial, rather than a pain in the butt, to softcap.

Stone armor is probably the last. Outside granite the set is too squishy and end heavy, and inside granite you'd be lucky to solo anything inside a year (let alone climb a 2 inch curb). I don't want to trade off all my offense for the defense the rest of the set ought to be providing. Not to mention that, even with the customization, it's still pretty weird looking.

Until recently, super strength was off limits to me as well, simply because I signed on to play a superhero, not popeye the sailor man. Thankfully, the set has animation customization now. I still don't have one, but it's no longer because of any deep objection to the set.

From my experience chain knockbacking many foes on teh way to 50 with my FF defender, my observation is that you can't knock something back again until it finishes standing up from the last one. You have to time it so that the new knockback effect hits a split second after the standing up animation finishes. If you're too early, they fly through the air but don't fall over (maybe even shooting at you along the way), which looks really funny but doesn't provide any mitigation.

Since knockdown is just low magnitude knockback, I would think it would work in the same way, so they couldn't be knocked down again until they finish standing up from the last one.

However, that said, I'm not actually sure it *does* work that way for knockdown patches. Reason being, although I never paid much attention to any individual foe, I'm almost certain I remember seeing foes being chain KD'd without ever finishing standing up by my dom's ice slick. Further testing is in order, I think.

As for the target cap, my bet would personally be on it randomly selecting 10 targets out of the 16 each time it ticks. I don't have anything except gut feeling to go on for this, though. We definitely know, though, that when AoE powers hit multiple targets, the game handles the hits sequentially - we can tell this because we can see the streakbreaker forcing hits in the combat logs if you miss too many of the targets in the AoE. Presumably, the game picks a target, rolls to hit (if applicable, obviously not for a power like ice slick), notes the effects to be applied, and then moves on to the next target, stopping when it runs out of targets or hits the target cap for the AoE. The big question, though, is 'how does it pick the next target - randomly, or in some set order?' My guess is randomly, but that's only based on the fact that that's the way *I* would have wanted to do it if it were up to me.

If we really wanted to test this, I would think it would be best to go to a PvP zone, line up several players in a line, and then hit the guy on the end with a large radius TAoE and see in what order the tohit rolls show up in the combat logs (presumably, this order reflects the order which the game rolled the hits). If it does go by distance from the caster or distance from the focus point, it would be fairly easy to tell the difference between that and a random order.

If it does select targets randomly, then calculating stuff isn't too bad - any one mob simply has a (target cap)/(# of targets) chance of being targeted by the power each time it ticks. Figuring out how to deal with the lockout period, if there does turn out to be one, will be more complicated, but it should be able to be done.

If, on the other hand, it picks targets in some non-random order, well, I'm not sure what to do in that case.

Warshades and peacebringers definitely do have a lot of similarities on the surface, but there are many differences too, and they play quite differently.

The shapeshifted forms are the easiest to talk about, and also the most similar. Bright and dark novae indeed are effectively identical except for visuals and secondary effects on the blasts. White and black dwarf are also similar, but not as much as the nova forms. Black dwarf generally has better damage thanks to the ability to buff itself with black dwarf mire. However, white dwarf is much better at holding aggro, since white dwarf flare carries a taunt effect where black dwarf mire does not.

The human form powers and the inherents are where the real differences lie. Peacebringers get better at whatever the team isn't good at - they gain resistances from offensive oriented teammates and damage from defensive ones. As such, their inherent tends to nudge them towards a complementary role. Warshades, on the other hand, get better at the things their teammates are good at - damage from offensive allies, resistances from defensive ones. Their inherent encourages them to build on what their teammates are already doing. It is a relatively subtle, but still important difference.

More apparent, though, are the differences in human form powers. In a nutshell, warshades feed off their enemies, peacebringers do not. Both get some attacks, but there the similarities end. Peacebringers get relatively straightforward self buffs, self heals, and other abilities, where warshades suck energy from defeated foes, drain their foes to buff their own damage, and even explode their defeated enemies as bombs. Peacebringers get a traditional godmode, complete with crash. Warshades have to drain their foes to increase their toughness, but theirs recharges faster and has no crash. The peacebringer 'pet' summon is effectively a mini-nuke attached to three kamikaze exploding energy ball pets. The warshade pet summon raises a dark energy pet from a defeated foe, which follows you and attacks as a true pet - for a while.

In general, peacebringers are usually described as more consistent than warshades. Their abilities are self-contained - they heal themselves, buff their own damage with buildup, slow their endurance drain with conserve power, summon pets from their own energy, and can activate their godmode preemptively if desired. Warshades, on the other hand, play like a roller coaster - always seesawing up and down, seeking the next batch of foes to leech damage, resistances, health, and endurance from and to explode and raise pets with their bodies. The highs are higher, but there can be lows if you aren't careful, and you can't be at full strength without foes to drain.

Peacebringers are probably more straightforward to play for someone new to kheldians. It has been argued however that, in the hands of an experienced player (and with plenty of influence invested!), warshades are perhaps the more powerful - which is of course not to say that peacebringers are weak, though. Neither are the uber 'I win button' ATs many seem to expect upon misinterpreting the label 'epic AT', but they are both very interesting and potent ATs.

Because a character at 45% defense is literally twice as hard to kill as one at 40%, and ten times harder to kill than one with 0% defense? Defense has accelerating returns - each point of defense gives you a larger boost to your survivability than the one before. Hitting that magic 45% is the key to surviving some of the most ridiculous challenges this game can offer.