PleaseRecycle

Hopefully Synapse nerfs this pretty hard before people get too attached to it. It would kind of suck if they had to consider guaranteed double build up as a given for future balance decisions.

Well let's be honest, inner inspiration did and still does make it easy to keep a tray full of whatever inspirations you happen to prefer. The old behavior meant that just logging onto different characters to do your marketing would produce three medium or large inspirations per character essentially every time you logged in. Now it will be slightly less frequent. The change has essentially no effect on the power in normal play. You can argue that there was no need to curtail "insp farming" or whatever one would call it but clearly the devs did not agree and this change doesn't seem like it really hurts anything. If I had to guess I would say that they were considering adding future powers that are like inner inspiration but that may have effects that the devs care more about controlling access to.

I feel like I'm the last person who would be accused of going out of my way to see the worst in the devs. Given that, the lack of a freespec for changes this significant is eyebrow-raising. I have more respecs per character than I could use if I wanted to so in that sense I don't care one way or the other but if freespecs are done as a thing that is given out, that would be worrisome. That said, I don't think that this one data point is enough for us to say that they will never give out another freespec or that they would only do so grudgingly. We don't know what they're doing in April, for example.

If respecs go on sale in the market in the next couple months for 50% off, that's where you might consider complaining loudly on the forum. Failing that, well, there've been other issues that lacked freespecs and the sky didn't fall then.

Kristof Jaeger is obscure because to run his arc outside of ouroboros you need not only to kill 1000 longbow before level 30 but also find him in the first place. And his arc sucks so nobody would run it through ouroboros anyway.

Crimson Revenant is much easier to unlock but the odds of actually finding him seem rather low to me, and once again your reward if you manage it before level 35 is two identical, crappy arcs.

At least with the slot machine you're somewhat motivated by the fact that it's kind of a novelty contact and the badge it requires is also required for one of the accolades. The Nerva contacts... I pity anyone who goes to the trouble of unlocking them expecting something neat as a reward.

Given the ranged defense and power range bonuses you get from the set, I'd think it would be worth considering pulling one of the purple sets, catalyzing defender's bastion, and replacing the purple set with an equivalent. Replace unbreakable constraint with basilisk's gaze, for instance, and in exchange for 1.25% global recharge you get ~2.5% ranged defense. That can easily be a good trade.

I recently posted a fortunata build that has been serving me well to say the least. It has in fact become one of my favorite characters. I link to it not to suggest that you copy it but as a reference point for a couple of critiques.

One thing that leaps out is that you have a ton of attacks. If you definitely want to have a full melee chain and a full ranged chain then so be it, but consider that forts get an uncommonly versatile ranged chain and when you're using your ranged powers your melee powers are basically taking up space and providing set bonuses, and vice versa. It seems to me that part of your motivation with the melee powers is defense bonuses, but as you can see it is possible to softcap with far fewer bonuses than most people think. A substitute for some of the enhancement boosting would be a gladiator's armor global, which you can of course get for influence.

Psychic wail is a great attack. It's really a shame to slot absolute amazement in there. Off the top of my head I'd imagine that after enhancements and buffs, that slotting leaves it hitting no harder than spin. It can be so much more!

Seriously consider getting leadership for assault and maneuvers. You want damage buffs, there you go, and it's more defense for you and your team as well. I would also drop aim. To make up for that, slot gaussian's synchronized fire control in TT:Leadership - not only is it a constant, cheap tohit bonus for you (and the team), it gives you 2.5% defense to all positions.

Finally, coercive persuasion is definitely awesome in aura of confusion, to the point where you really don't need more than one or maybe two slots in confuse. Let me put it this way: one of the new Dark Astoria missions lets you go solo against spawns that resemble a full ITF. With one-slotted confuse I was able to hit four or five bosses per spawn with confuse, jump in and hit aura, and by the time it wore off the spawn was essentially dead.

Having now mucked about with dark/time up to 22 I must profess my enjoyment of the combination. Easily the supportiest character I've ever created, to say nothing of enjoyed, yet it's a blast to have such myriad tricks up one's sleeve. I may end up getting heal badges! I thought they were but legend...

Ah, Gaussian's synchronized fire control. You can see why I use the abbreviation, yet I can see why not everyone knows that by heart.

I couldn't say whether it's working or not beyond that it seemed like people had come to the conclusion that it had started working on beta and this is the version that they were playing. What I can say is that the superior version at least does not have the purple GSFC-style buff icon, instead it has a generic dark debuff icon. Awe inspiring, no?

I find this to be an odd complaint considering that to get to these personal story missions in the first place you need to run some of the most grandiose content that the game contains and you're in no way discouraged from doing so solo. Did you feel "less heroic" when you ran Solaris' story mission after you soloed what was quite rightly described as an actual army of powerful monsters? What I took away from that arc was that those missions were supremely badass and I was fairly badass myself for refusing help at the end. Getting a small respite for plot thickening after that isn't excusable, it's appreciated.

Yeah, as a caveat to my previous post I should note that I hardly ever play control ATs so my impulse when I do is to look for every possible place to squeeze out some damage. From that perspective it isn't a very good power so I wouldn't recommend slotting it with posi's blast unless you desperately need the 6.25% bonus and have the slots for it.

It's quite possibly a perfectly good immobilize power but since my last controller was plant/storm of all things I figure there's no chance for it to do anything but pale in comparison to his immobilization potential (what doesn't?) I'll be trying a different approach this time. Dark seems like it has pretty excellent controlliness without relying on that most standard of tools but without being quite as esoterically soft as illusion. I was thinking of will of the controller in heart of darkness, but then, I guess I could spring for absolute amazement... Decisions, decisions.

Living shadows does such astonishingly poor damage that I'm not sure it would be worth slotting it for anything but set bonuses. I'd say the same of any aoe immobilize apart from roots, but living shadows has the additional disadvantage of being a cone. This is a disadvantage inasmuch as continual reapplication will require continued presence at the periphery of the spawn, other aoe immobs allowing you to keep applying them from wherever you like. Frankly it seems like hands down the most skippable power in the set and that's precisely what I'm doing on my own controller. As far as containment goes, as I see it dark does pretty well in terms of other methods of gaining it, especially if you have a secondary that also contains some control.

I find that the characters I enjoy playing the most are those who whose concepts I find amusing. If I can't think of a funny backstory for someone it usually means it wasn't meant to be. This is partly, perhaps even largely, due to the fact that I find it hard to reconcile the absolutely dizzying array of decidedly disparate deeds of derring do that one's dudes tend to experience during the course of their careers, as it were. At the same time the nature of the game entails that little of what they do has much of a personal hook to it, which only the most recent content is beginning to try to change. In light of that, why would my peeps bother with all of this? Probably morbid curiosity and an abiding disregard for the fact that arresting hundreds of people a day would at the very least result in prison overcrowding the likes of which has not been seen since Stalin famously converted all of Siberia into a giant subterranean jail.

It also seems hard to me to come up with non-overpowered concepts since the very act of playing the game well means your character has, depending on the context, apocalyptic levels of potency. Thus I decouple character power from character concept. Does it make sense that my hero who is ostensibly a private detective has participated in the downfall of Praetoria? It certainly doesn't, but fortunately it doesn't have to because none of this is that serious in the first place.

I really recommend DA as a villain. It was the most satisfying story experience I've had in the game in so many ways. I've only run through it once so I don't know how many of the choices you make are fluff and how many are substantial, but they made all of them feel substantial. I am so not a roleplayer but I was pretty much on the edge of my seat with ants in my pants by the end regarding the climactic decision. But I'll say no more aside from "my god man, what are you waiting for, go try it!"

It's been true with alarming frequency lately that each new issue is the best issue yet, and 22 is no exception. My favorite part aside from the finale of new DA is the revisiting of Cimerora. Novel content executed well, and most importantly there's an emphasis on challenge. Especially the end of Solaris' arc... Come on! That is so freaking cool. You know what I mean.

Sort of as an aside, while making my new dark controller I was struck by just how much really good stuff there is in the costume creator now. Sure it was great at launch but now it's incomparable. A moment's thought led to the realization that that's pretty much the story of the game at this point: you can get to 50 not just by sticking to good, recent content, but having your pick of different avenues of good content. Good job, devs.

What can I say, creepy eyes really do it for me. And in the game.

I had dark/cold all planned out. Great buffs and debuffs, goes very well with dark's tricks, the sets seem perfect for each other mechanically, and they even make some thematic sense together. Then I got to the power customization screen and saw the palette that cold gets. Dark/time it is! Sorry cold, but I'm not going to sully a set that looks as stunning as dark with a bunch of pastel ice cubes and pale grey fog. On the bright (heh) side, I haven't played time yet and have played cold extensively so it probably worked out for the best. The effects even looks vaguely similar, which is nice.

Oh, and dark control's fearsome stare is the best effect in the game, bar none.

Hmm. I hadn't thought about the focus thing, but I wonder if it'd be worth it? I mean there's slow attacks and then there's thunder strike. I was thinking the hecatomb proc in CB would sweeten that chain considerably, and I just like both JL and CI a lot more than TS for their aoe capacity. As usual though I'll probably just wait for someone with the inclination to do so to figure out the exact value of various recharge levels of attacks.

Man, I was totally pumped for my KM/Ice, all ready to go for today and everything, and now you guys have me thinking of rerolling with Elec/Ice. I hadn't even thought of that! The best part is now you can skip thunder strike and instead run CB > JL > CB > AS > CB > JL > CB > CI. Dang that chain looks nice, and it doesn't involve any lame-o powers like focused burst... But no perma-build up! But perma-build up is kind of annoying to actually put into practice... So conflicted. Then again one of the sets gets lightning rod and one of them doesn't.

The fortunata hypnosis proc can't actually work the same way as placate the power for stalkers, can it?

If someone else has pointed this out I missed it, but what I would call attention to is the mid-level arcs they've been adding. I haven't played the issue 22 ones yet, but just the Nance-to-Cooling ones feature some fairly heroic stuff. "But your praetorian/primal self dies," you mournfully opine. Sure, in like the most heroic possible way, and right after you take down a fairly serious villain. Then, a whole other arc in which you totally save the city. It's not all upbeat all the time but overall I find it resoundingly positive. I'd say the same of Sutter, too: Sure, Skyway City gets totally exploded, but the important thing to consider is that Skyway City is dumb and nobody likes it. You go on to trounce all of the perpetrators with your trouncing stick, again saving the city. How cool is that? Pretty dang cool!