Obitus

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

As a sidenote vis-a-vis the buff/debuff team issue, I've always thought it was interesting that the best singular damage buff in the game (Fulcrum Shift) has a huge melee bias.

Yeah, and aren't you given a mutually exclusive choice to kill either Cleo or Washington in that mission? It's not like either choice is exactly the moral high ground. It is at least credible that a well-meaning character who grew up in Praetoria would side with the authority figure when faced with that numbing choice -- out of reflex if for no other reason. Heck, Cleo just tried to kill the PC.

I gotta say, for all that Praetoria is a goatee universe, Loyalist Responsibility and Resistance Warden seem very similar, morally speaking. The whole point of the storyline is that there are no good options. There are only less bad options.

It makes for a great transition into Primal Earth content, because a character could reasonably decide to go Hero/Villain for any number of reasons. For my Dominator, she started out going to the Rogue Isles because she didn't trust that the Primal version of Marcus Cole was as upstanding as he's made out to be, and the purported individual freedom in the Rogue Isles appealed to her. From there, it was a slippery-slope descent from disillusionment into outright villainy.

Likewise, an authoritarian villain type could easily go to Paragon because he assumes that a more ordered society will be easier to twist and ultimately control. As Praetorians, our characters would view their world and ours differently than we do.

It isn't simply a matter of saying Loyalist = Villain and Resistance = Hero. Either could plausibly be either. Or neither.

Yeah, I think what strikes me most about Judgement is that debuff characters will do more damage with it than Blasters, in some cases a lot more. Blasters' burst advantage is tied to large short-term buffs like Aim and Build Up. Blasters' overall damage advantage is tied to their AT damage scalar, which is the highest in the game (Tied with Scrappers).

Neither one of those things affects Judgement by design. Musculature is great and all, but debuff builds can have a boosted Judgement without having to be pigeon-holed into Musculature. In fact, Controllers are probably the AT best-suited to take advantage of Musculature, because Containment gives them an effective damage scalar on par with Blasters' (0.55 * 2 versus 1.125), and because Controllers generally have less access to consistent damage buffs (like Defiance and cycled Aim/Build Up) -- which means that Musculature represents a higher proportional gain for Controllers.

So a Controller with a typical RES debuff (~30%) and the Musculature boost could potentially deliver 450 * 1.45 * 1.3 = 848.25, or nearly 90% more damage than a Blaster with the far more typical Spiritual or Cardiac Alpha. Every 90 seconds. Crashless.

(BTW, I'm not sure where you're getting 710 if the base damage on Judgement is presumed to be 450. Musculature isn't a ~58% damage bonus. Am I missing something?)

I say all of the above with the understanding that high-level teams already marginalize Blasters. Which isn't to say that Blasters can't get teams, or even that they can't succeed on their own. It's just an observation about an AT that is not particularly good at soloing or teaming, whereas most other ATs are at least very good at one or the other.

Memory has a way of softening the bad and enhancing the good. This forum has had its share of acrimony since day one. If you think the current, mostly Incarnate-related snits are unprecedented, then just try to imagine (or if you were here, then think back to) the crapstorm that erupted over Enhancement Diversification.

The difference on the CoH boards, I think, is that most people here will at least give you a few posts before the discussion devolves into chaos. There seems to be a lot less knee-jerk, one-line flippancy on the COH forum than there is on some other games' forums. People who come here asking for good-faith advice or information usually get it, even if it sometimes comes with a little snark on the side. Protracted debates can get pretty ugly, but then in my experience, that's always true; after a point, inevitably, each side is merely restating (over and over and over) its position in slightly different ways, with neither one reading the other's very carefully as a result. And the more you restate something, the more likely it is that something you say will be taken the wrong way.

And the more things are taken the wrong way, the faster you end up arguing over phrasing rather than content, and phrasing is inherently personal: I can disagree with your position without holding a grudge, but the way you choose to phrase your position speaks to your personality and your thought processes. The internet is particularly prone to this sort of devolution in debate, because it's perhaps the only medium to offer you endless opportunities to reply, and in a quasi-public way. In real debates, there are time limits for a reason, and I say that in full recognition that I've fallen victim to last-wordism more than a few times here, myself.

YMMV, but I always get a bit of a chuckle when people lament the good old days. It's popular to argue that political discourse in the US has recently declined to unprecedented depths, for instance -- which is a very tenuous observation on its face given that the the US started with a revolution. I don't see too many duels fought among the political class these days, either.

Apologies for the long-winded and self-indulgent reply.

Hey, I'm disappointed too that GR Praetoria -- which started off with a nuanced, shades-of-grey vibe, which allowed for seemingly unprecedented amounts of substantive story line interactivity -- ultimately turned out to be goatee universe, again. It's disappointing that GR basically ends at level 20, too, dumping you rather unceremoniously into the far less polished content on Primal Earth.

Then again, GR Praetoria is basically a single-player game. And a pretty good one, IMO. That model of story telling just wasn't going to work over the full spectrum of an MMO's content. Eventually, something had to give.

In theory, it's nice to say that more choices are always better, but it's a theory that's rarely practical to implement. Your ability to play your own character, your own way, will always reside largely in your own head. You're not gonna get pro-Cole Strike Forces to mirror the pro-Primal Incarnate tasks into which the devs are pouring all of their resources, but you can pretend that your character is doing whatever the heck he wants, whether you choose to participate in the existing Strike Forces or not.

Heck, FWIW I kinda off-handedly make up my own narratives for TFs these days anyway, because it's usually very difficult to read all the clues that the game supplies when your team is speeding through objectives. Call it a mini (or meta) game.

As far as stats go, there was a Positron interview within the last couple months where he supplied side-switching statistics. I don't have a link, and I don't remember off-hand what the numbers were, but Venture's figures sound right.

Huh? +0/x1 is Heroic. Actually, it's easier than Heroic was at the beginning, because you used to have a lot more over-lapping spawns and buggy triggers (like level 30+ Nemesis showing up in level 20 missions). Oh, and you didn't have the option to turn off bosses, back in the day.

But wait, it gets better: You can now choose to do missions at -1/x1, if you're really worried about soloing speed. You'll earn less experience per defeat, but you may well earn more experience per unit time. If you're really having trouble soloing a high-offense character through the early game at base difficulty, then the only thing I can suggest is that you use more Inspirations, specifically Luck Inspirations. Inspirations are the answer to almost every solo-related problem.

The following is meant to respond to the thread in general, not Psychic Guardian in particular:

An extra end-game progression necessarily hurts alting, but only to the extent that players care about achieving the pinnacle with every single character. Any extra progression on top of the basic 50 levels would do that.

But is that a valid concern? Is there really any difference between leaving an alt at level 45 for months or even years (I've done that) when the cap is 50, and leaving a level 50 alt without Incarnate boosts when the (new) cap is five Incarnate boosts? Why should you feel any more compelled to complete every single character's progression now than you did before? Would you feel the same annoyance if the level cap had been raised to 60? How about if those extra levels were extraordinarily slow?

For some weird reason, any mark of progression that isn't explicitly labeled as a character level seems to drive people to distraction. I include myself, by the way: when the WST first came out I found myself mindlessly grinding the same TF three or four times in a feverish quest to "complete" a handful of my favorite characters. Then I took a step back and took stock of the situation, and realized that there was no rush. And at least with regard to Alpha, not only is there no rush; there's very little mechanical incentive to bother with the Tier 4 boost at all, for most builds. The Tier 3 boost is one Notice of the Well. One Weekly Task Force. One.

The Tier 3 costs a butt-load of shards too, you say? Well, yeah, except that any level 50 content will allow you to earn shards as a natural consequence of playing the game normally -- and after I-20, any content at all will do. If you run in teams, and especially if you run a level-50 TF here or there, those shard requirements will fly by.

So if you were in the mood to play a given level 50 anyway, you will earn shards. If you're at all interested in teaming, you'll earn them fairly fast. If you were not interested in playing that character anyway, then the shard grind shouldn't suddenly make those characters more compelling. If you don't treat the game like a job, it won't seem like one. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not solo players should have faster options to obtain Incarnate boosts, but the Incarnate system, in principle, isn't anti-casual (or anti-alting) anymore than levels are.

The popmenu stuff is great for general-purpose play, but I think you're better off with binds that work automatically in the background if you're farming. Me, I use the movement binds Deevian cites above, except that instead of using movement keys to trigger them, I use my AoE powers.

So for example:

/bind [key] "powexec_name Foot Stomp$$inspcombine insight enrage$$inspcombine bounce_back enrage$$inspcombine catch_a_breath enrage$$inspcombine respite enrage$$inspcombine sturdy enrage$$inspcombine break_free enrage$$inspcombine awaken enrage"

Toss higher-tier combining binds on the other AoEs (Burn, Elec Fences, Ball Lightning). Then I use button4 (the "back" button on the side of my mouse) and mousechord to eat reds and purples, respectively.

It all comes down to personal preference. I just find that a) moving around on a farming brute build probably isn't going to be something you're doing a lot naturally, and b) there's enough stuff to click on without having to worry about popmenus.

Oh, and nice guide Micro. Great stuff.

It works fine provided that DP is well-saturated and provided that you use it as often as it's available. The problem I tend to run into with boss-spawning farms is that eventually I reach a point where semi-scattered bosses are the only mobs left, so it's harder to saturate DP, and I'm also taking more damage from each mob.

Doesn't always kill me, but it can get interesting. It's definitely easier to do with teammates + Vengeance, though; lowers your reliance on Inspirations.

Oh, and don't forget World of Confusion. With a Coercive Persuasion proc slotted, it becomes a very nice PBAoE damage mitigation power (provided you don't get stunned, but you should be running non-mez maps anyway). Without the proc, it's kinda crappy. The proc is actually better than the power by a not-insignificant margin. (The proc effect is itself a small AoE, so if you're surrounded by several mobs there's a good chance that it will trigger on more than one of them, which means that each mob around you will be hit with multiple confuses. Yes, it can confuse bosses if you're surrounded by enough stuff.)

I wouldn't recommend you not try the Blaster; at the worst you end up with a fun character for a change of pace (either for farming purposes or elsewhere). I just don't think it's ever going to compete with a Brute in terms of sheer turn-your-brain-off ease of use.

Having played around extensively on a Fire/Mental Blaster (even retooling an alternate build specifically for AE ambush farms to PL friends), it ain't gonna work as well as your Brute. Even ignoring scatter, the Brute's higher RES cap is important; with both at the soft-cap for DEF and at their respect AT RES caps, the Blaster still takes 2.5 times as much damage.

So a Blaster can (by leaning heavily on Inspirations) pretty easily handle non-boss ambush farms. Boss-spawning farms are a little dicier, both because bosses resist immobilize and because they do so much more damage than lieutenants. Your margin for error is non-existent when compared with a Brute's. Miss an Inspiration cycle or a Drain Psyche refresh by even a couple of seconds and you can eat floor.

Dual Pistols might have a little easier time than Fire because DP has a crashless PBAoE nuke up every 30 seconds or so, which is a better damage dealing tool in a farming environment than Rain of Fire. An SS/FA Brute ought to still win handily, though, given that he can better afford to pop reds.

Farming a Blaster sure is more interesting than farming a Brute, though.

Did I say it was a bad thing? I was explaining why you took Concealment when generally Fire Brutes don't want it.

Seriously, dude, you're tossing attitude all over the place for no reason.

He probably has Fiery Embrace toggled on. That would account for the extra fire damage. Also note that, IIRC, Deevian's build loads with Vengeance toggled on, so his DEF numbers are only that high when he's PLing dead teammates.

CJ is a great power to have, but the Jumping Pool only gives you one opportunity to slot a Luck of the Gambler proc (in CJ itself). Deevian took the Concealment pool because it gives you three opportunities to slot that recharge bonus. Deevian's is a niche build focused on farming and nothing else. In general, Fire Tankers/Brutes don't want the Concealment pool. I don't have Deevian's build up at the moment, but I don't imagine that Mu Lightning is terribly useful in the context for which the build was designed. Single-target attacks are marginalized on farm maps.

(The chance for heal proc is just there because he's probably using Entropic Chaos for the global recharge bonus, in other words.)

Hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Given your recent decline into too-precocious know-it-all-ism, I feel some nitpicking is appropriate.

It doesn't matter whether you buy the components with AE tickets, A-Merits, R-Merits, influence, or whether a good friend gives them to you. The build's value is the build's value. Anything you acquire for the build could have been exchanged elsewhere on the market for influence.

Yes, and now that you've settled that matter in your own mind, you've taken it upon yourself to play ghetto topic police, even though you didn't even start the thread. I admit, you've grown a little too pompous for my taste: in the space of a few pages, you've gone from asking naive questions to lecturing everyone, including some of the people who helped you to achieve your current, allegedly lofty heights of knowledge.

You can mock me all you like for "defending Nihili's honor," but the bottom line is that your attitude has out-kicked its coverage. I can be forgiven for calling you on it. It amuses me to do so, and I'm pretty sure I'm only voicing what a lot of other people are thinking. If not, then oh well.

El oh el.

Oh, you're far too charitable.

But hey, I accept that it's possible to buy the build for under 1 billion. I don't accept that it's as easy as his comment might lead you to believe, though. Even if we assume 100 million for the LoTGs and the Miracle recipes, and 60 for the Numina, then (including salvage and crafting costs) we're looking at about 700 million total just for those seven IOs (106 * 6 + 66 = 702 million). The rest of the build is very cheap comparatively speaking, but 300 million's cutting it a little close. (The Obliterations and Steadfast unique will probably take up the bulk of that 300 million.)

You have to be a bargain hunter to get comfortably under a billion. If you want to assemble the build in one sitting, you're more likely looking at nearly double that price. Not that it's a big deal either way if you're very interested in farming, but it is what it is.

I offer that breakdown in the same spirit of rigid correctness that characterizes Deevian's recent posts.

This is also worth clarifying. The Brute damage cap is 775%, but that includes the base damage and damage enhancements, neither of which is visible in Combat Attributes. So if you're monitoring your damage bonus, and your attacks are at the ED cap for damage enhancement (+95%), then the number you're looking for is +580%, not +675%.

Again, not a huge deal in a farming context, because wasting reds isn't gonna hurt you much. Still, this info might make you a teensy tiny bit more efficient if you had the wrong idea before. If you (Deevian) did have the right idea before, then take this post as a general tip directed at the thread at large, not a patronizing attack on your oh-so-exhaustive farming knowledge.

Not everyone was talking about SS/Fire/Mu. You yourself spent a good deal of time questioning that SS/Fire/Mu made the best farmer, and made some rather naive comments in your martinet-like quest for knowledge. ("Midnight Grasp looks like an awesome AoE, dude!")

It's a fine farming build, and I'm sure there are people out there who will find your new-found insight useful. Still, a by-rote guide to a specific build is only so useful. I hate to keep bringing it up, but again: you yourself spent a good deal of time questioning the conventional wisdom with respect to SS/Fire/Mu. You demanded numerical and logical arguments to support the theory that SS/Fire/Mu is superior. You tasked people with supplying information on alternate builds.

You wanted, in short, to get a wider picture than what a by-rote build guide would give you. And you were right to want that.

But now, you act as if SS/Fire/Mu is the alpha and omega, the sole appropriate topic for discussion in this thread, and a powerset combination that is exemplified by your build, the basis for which ultrawatt spoon fed to you. I'm glad you're happy with your brute, and I'm glad that you got the info you wanted -- but you seem to have transitioned from naive curiosity to know-it-all pedantry in record time.

I repeat: Nihili's is a good general rule of thumb. Even long-time vets can get a little caught up in the quest for set bonuses. Just because you think it's an obvious point, it doesn't follow that everyone else will. Besides, sometimes the most obvious points are worth mentioning precisely because they're old hat. A reminder of the basic principles is never a bad thing. I don't know why you wouldn't just let the point pass if you feel it doesn't apply to you. Every comment is not directed your way, here.

Uh, no. If you're willing to wait a week or more on very lowball bids, then there's a snowball's chance in hell that you might be able to squeak under the one billion mark with that build. But it's nowhere near "definitely under a billion." The Lucks of the Gambler and Miracle/Numina procs alone will cost you anywhere from 1-1.5 billion if you're interested in buying them anytime soon. It's a bit of a nitpick, but if we're insisting on accurate and useful information, it's worth making.

Also not sure that charging people for PLs can be considered anything more than a niche practice. I'd surely never do it, though Vengeance is nice to have if you plan to PL friends I guess.

Crushing Impact is a great set; don't let anyone tell you differently.

It's just cheap, which is a good thing.

I can't speak for Nihili, but I do think the point he made is worth making. When you're plotting out a build, especially when you're new to the game or to an Archetype, there's a tendency to get too focused on a particular set-bonus goal -- whether it's global recharge, soft-capped DEF, the HP cap (big for WP characters, it seems), or some combination thereof. It's great to have set-bonus goals, but you can end up shooting yourself in the foot if you allow those goals to obscure the inherent strengths of the build in question. For me, the word "bonus" encapsulates the issue: The minute that IO set bonuses cease to be a bonus (that is, something extra) and instead become the compensation for glaring and self-imposed weaknesses elsewhere is the minute that you've jumped the shark.

There are no hard-and-fast rules. If you have high enough set bonuses in a particular area, then you can afford to skimp in enhancements to this-or-that power. The whole is what matters, and there will always be trade-offs somewhere. That's what's so interesting about character builds in CoH.

But as a general guideline, I like to start my builds by putting basic enhancements in what I consider to be my most important powers. That way I can get a good grasp of how many slots I have to play with before I start messing around with sets. As I go, I replace those basic enhancements, noting how much I'm gaining/losing in each particular power, here and there adding or subtracting a slot to compensate. (Or not, depending on how the rest of the build is shaping up.)

A farm build is a bit easier to put together because its purpose is so very narrow, but we've seen people in this thread even lose the plot a little there, too. On top of the build's inherent strengths and weaknesses, one should always try to keep firmly in mind the purpose of the build, and the circumstances in which the build is most likely to find itself.

As I said earlier, I think you probably understand all of the above instinctively if not consciously. I think Nihili was just throwing out a basic principle for general consumption, given that this thread is full of semi-obvious questions and answers. You yourself spent a good deal of time in this thread asking kind of, well, let's say inexperienced questions -- and so I think your annoyance at Nihili's allegedly stating the obvious is misplaced.

I'm sure everyone recognizes that your Ultrawatt-derived Brute build is a farming monster, and that now you're a pro of the farming-brute game. Let's not throw out all advice or information on the basis that it's old hat to you personally, though, ok?

Yeah, ambush farming is rather unique in the sense that it encourages you to build around hardcore Inspiration use -- whereas most of the other builds posted on these forums are designed to minimize reliance on Inspirations.

For what it's worth, though, I can do an ambush farm on a Fire/Mental Blaster with negligible DEF just by popping Oranges and Purple Inspirations. It's not an ideal character for the job; scatter can slow me down and I can die if I don't pay good attention to my Inspiration/regen buffs -- but all I really need on that build to get the job done is +recharge.

In your case, as a DM Brute you need recharge even more than a typical SS/FA would; you don't have the same consistent AoE output available from your primary, so you're going to have to lean harder on long-recharging Patron attacks and on spamming Burn (and Fiery Embrace) as quickly as possible. You also don't have access to the spectacular Footstomp + Force Feedback combo that allows SS characters to skimp a bit on +recharge.

There was a link posted earlier in this thread that'll take you to a guide on making binds/macros for combining Inspirations. I recommend you look that up; it's a game changer almost no matter what build you're playing. (And just for convenience's sake, here it is: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...aker%27s+guide ).

There's nothing wrong with making a more general-purpose */FA build, but if you are going to make a general-purpose */FA build, then you're better off emphasizing a different kind of DEF -- smash/lethal or a mix of melee/ranged, usually. Really anything else would be better than Fire/Cold outside of a farming environment, and I'm not just saying that because FA already gives you capped Fire Resist; Fire/Cold attacks are rare near to the point of non-existence when you look at the over-arching context of the game's content. (Edit: I notice you also mention +regen bonuses in a previous post; as a DM/Fire build you shouldn't pursue those either, because you already have access to two really good heals in Siphon Life and Healing Flames, the benefit of which will trivialize anything you can reasonably get from IO +regen bonuses.)

Th-the ... er ... Judgment slot, then? Oh, no, you talked about knowledge. Hum ... I know, Lore!

You have a key power. Let's call it Footstomp.

You wanna build for uber IO set bonuses.

First priority, though, is to make sure your key power is slotted well (enhanced for ED-capped damage and a healthy amount of endurance/recharge reduction). Often, you can find a set that does both jobs for you; sometimes you can't.

I think you probably understand that. Nihili was just trying to clarify, I think, for any new readers.

I bolded the phrase that (I think) is the source of contention. +100% recharge with Hasten up ain't so great, particularly on a Farm build, which doesn't need a whole heck of a lot of DEF. Worse still, Fire/Cold DEF is probably the worst type in the game outside of a farming context -- so you've created a build that isn't particularly good at farming and doesn't get any worthwhile benefit elsewhere.

DEF doesn't hurt. Personally I'd shoot for about 20% F/C DEF (18.75% for those with the Vet badge) if I can squeeze it in, because that means two small Lucks will give me the soft cap in a farm map. But recharge is better in this particular case.

I'm sure your build will work just fine, but it seems a shame to put that much effort into a niche build and not optimize it for the niche in question. You ought to be able to get 90ish% in global recharge (before Hasten) without even trying very hard in a farm-specialized build. That's without purples. You can probably get 50-60% without even using Luck of the Gambler procs.

If your comment about Hasten was a typo, then I apologize.

Try me. I didn't miss your over-arching point, which was (apparently) dissatisfaction. My reply was meant to address the following:

"In regards to the other recipies and makeing a good one for cheap well thats possible i guess if you have lots of immobs and confuse"

In retrospect, I guess what you meant to say there was that you needed a lot of confuses and immobilizes to slot the cheaper purple sets, but I took your meaning as, "I need lots of rare-ish powers to make a good build without breaking the bank." The former interpretation is true, as far as it goes. The second isn't true. Some builds are almost better off without purples.

My offer stands. One of the little tidbits in your previous post that perked my interest was all of the extra PvPIOs you were using. Those seem excessive, but I don't know what they are or what your goals with that build are.

Fair enough.

As for the rest, the problem is that you're not supposed to be able to max out 30 characters. For good or ill, the game is giving us (more and more) long-term character-development paths, and by definition, long-term isn't short or easy. I sympathize with your desire to pimp out all of your alts, but we're all gonna have to start picking and choosing.

The info that's starting to come out from the Beta test is pretty darn sexy though

Different strokes for different folks, but Defense is definitely worthwhile. When planning out my Mind/Fire, I ran into a dilemma of the indecisive-power-gamer kind to which I'm often prone:

One of the main selling points of Dominators is that they can get consistent status protection from perma-Domination. If all of my squishier characters (on which I miss status protection) have high DEF, then will my perma-Dom with no DEF seem a vast improvement by comparison? Will I, in fact, be taking full advantage of the Dom's status protection relative to those other characters?

After pondering that question for awhile, I finally decided the answer was no, but the answer isn't the same for everyone.

It is certainly true that Doms have enough proactive mitigation (in the form of control) to survive quite well through most content. In fact, I had a pure-recharge perma-Dom build by level 30 that I used for the last twenty levels quite happily. But ultimately, for me, in order for the Dominator to reach its full potential as (IMO) the most situation-proof AT in the entire game, it has to have some passive DEF to layer behind its control. The issue isn't whether or not I planned to do my job correctly; the issue was to what extent I could minimize the character's weaknesses so as to have an answer for almost every situation.

There are good sides and bad to that approach. For one, if you're going for ranged DEF, you have to sacrifice some recharge. Not a huge amount, and in my mind not so much that it makes a significant difference (more on this in a sec), but it is something. You're also probably going to have pay more for the build.

DEF also allows you to avoid a lot of slow debuffs, so there will conceivably be situations where the non-DEF Dom with uber recharge will actually have less than a high ranged-DEF Dom.

This is semi-offtopic in a Mind/Fire/Fire thread, but just for the sake of thoroughness it's also worth noting that Dominators who take the Mace/Ice Mastery pools can achieve the Smash/Lethal softcap and give up virtually nothing in terms of recharge. The only downside is that you don't have the extra resistance to layer behind your defense that, say, a Fire Mastery build would have (or the all-important Fire Ball ).

Anyway, this is the build I'm using now:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Imperia: Level 50 Mutation Dominator
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Assault
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Fire Mastery
Highlights:

• ~4 seconds of downtime on Hasten. (95% global recharge from IOs)
• Ranged DEF soft cap.
• Mass Confuse/Total Dom alternatively available every ~35 seconds.
• Hovers at ~38 MPH. (Mid's is wrong on this one, dunno why exactly.)
• Capable of perma-Dom when exemped down to about level 27.
• Originally the intention was to go for the Spiritual Alpha, but after playing around with the build for awhile I decided to go with Cardiac (End/Range/Sleep/Fear). The effect on Fire Breath alone is worth it. Out-ranging the Pylons in Apex with Blaze is a nice perk too. In any case, one of the consequences of that decision is that I can run all of my scantily enhanced RES toggles for 51% S/L resistance. And Superspeed for the stealth, full-time.

As far as flaws go, the only thing that tweaks me sometimes when I consider the build is the under-enhanced Rain of Fire. Unfortunately, there's no good solution for that. I don't have an AoE immobilize, so RoF is pretty situational anyway (only consistently at its full potential when Total Dom is up, or when I have some sort of teammate support to keep mobs bunched together). Again, though, even an under-enhanced RoF fits the theme of minimizing weaknesses; the avoid effect it induces in NPC opponents is a nice fallback soft control for tight spaces where I can't otherwise ensure a ranged posture. Plus, it looks cool.

I'd be happy to offer build suggestions if you'd narrow down your build goals. You really don't need to have an unusual collection of powers to get 80+% performance out of a non-purpled build. Meleers do have a harder time stacking recharge without purples (because so many of their powers share sets with the same 5% bonus), but it's not a huge impediment.