Psylenz

I am late to the party but I want to be part of the *rabble rabble rabble* torch and pitchfork crew. It's most noticeable during zone events such as the winter realm, rikti invasion, zombie invasion kind of scenario.

To be honest, I am not sure which mastermind primary you are running. Moving from ~80% to 95+% accuracy can be a big deal for lowest and mid-tier pets. For instance, if they player is running a robots, thugs, or demon set which needs to address endurance reduction, defense, resistance, extra accuracy for the second tier guys, enforcers, ember demons, gargoyles, or protector bots can be simply huge.

Somebody can do the numbers, but if the mastermind is +1, +2, running leadership on himself or enforcers, the boost of 15-20% accuracy modified by tactics is even more noticeable for the little guys.

I have a level 45 Demon Summons/Thermal. He is a beast. It's one thing to compare a resistance build to a traps or forcefield defense build, but it's quite another thing if you take into account that a thermal mastermind has a superior AoE heal, which traps and forcefield don't have, and twilight grasp is so much smaller. The ember demon also heals, which stacks mitigation with the resistances. Burst damage trumps heals, but it takes numerous hits on resistance buffed pets to bring them down.

There is also another critical aspect to a Demon Summoner that can be brought to near soft cap, and that is the Demon Prince's slow. I have seen my Demon Prince do some amazing things when the fit hits the shan and I am re-summoning minions. The Demon Prince's hold is very nice, too. He usually opens up on the first thing that attacks my mastermind, so of course, I tap the meanest boss, nastiest lieutenant or peskiest minion first.

I went chill mastery on my mastermind, and I am not looking back. My first thought was Flash Freeze would be kind of a 'fill' power to get to the good stuff, but it's far better than that. Flash Freeze, then Heat Exhaust, and Melt Armor, and I might be getting hit just by the boss, which again plays right into my Demon Prince's AI. The demonlings take their ranged attacks, the hell on earth streams in with the Demon Prince, and it is truly a kill zone.

Don't overlook forge and thaw. Thaw can keep your demonlings in the fight. Demon Prince with hell on earth, ember demon with forge, and the gargoyle with forge is a terrific trio.

Of course the achilles heal has been identified in the Demon Summoning/Thermal build as endurance usage. Clearly, the cardiac alpha slotting is indicated.

If we hold out hoping for another free round of server transfers NCSoft won't make any money that way either. I need to move my incarnate characters to servers with more activity.

Most Annoying:

Maya Redhand and Snowglobe in a tie.

Tin pot dictators of epic proportions. Cronyism at its worst.

It is really hard to get a feel for some sets in the early levels. For instance, a Fire/Dark corruptor starts really fast, has good damage, debuff, AoE, and a self-heal by level six. On the other hand, an Ice blast/Cold domination is a fairly fragile set, buffs others well, but when the cold dom hits level 35, he's suddenly an AoE debuffing machine. Level 38 comes and the cold dom guy is a total debuffing berzerker. Warshades turn a corner at level 20 when they can morph into the dwarf form with good resists, overcoming their glass cannon image. When the warshade hits level 22, he replenishes his health and endurance from fallen foes - stygian circle. Total effectiveness just explodes.

I have a level 50 Bots/storm I liked so much I rerolled another just to play it again. I really like Bots, and I really like Storm. To me, its the ultimate in mastermind evolution.

Most of the time I duo'd with my cousin's Necro/Storm. It was simply unfair to our foes. We galed, we hurricaned, but when the freezing rain comes down, our kb/repel is used to push things back into the Freezing Rain patch where the zombies and the burn patches from the bots thrive.

Teaming with storms takes some communication and compromise. The controllers and the dominators are the ones that will get in your hair. Blasters, scrappers, tanks, stalkers, SoA, khelds can all eat their cake if they can't have it, too.

She likes corruptors? My knee jerk reaction is Fire/Dark. It's pretty straight forward and very powerful.

I am not sure how many would leave their established supergroups. Perhaps we could create a new global channel for getting all-defender/defender-heavy activity going.

One of the easiest ITFs I did was with 5 dmg dealers, a sonic/sonic, a storm defender, and my FF/psy. The storm defender said he wasn't a healer, but he was nice enough to top off my green bar when it got low. I knew what he meant; he didn't want to babysit 7 players with O2 boost. With layered sonic and forcefield buffs, he didn't have to. The storm and sonic debuffs were plenty to get the job done.

One of the strategies I read about is caging the pylons around Lord Recluse at the end of the Statesman TF. I wonder what mag of caging you need for the healing nictus around Romulus in the ITF.

Warshades and Peacebringers.

Back in the Day, like Fall of 2004, there were many all-defender SGs. The Triumphant Defenders were one of the first on Triumph. I myself had been in one on Guardian when the SG members bolted to some new sure-to-fail MMO by Blizzard.

All-defender teams, supergroups are addictive. Just give them a try. Duplication doesn't matter much although more than 2 FF defenders is less than optimal. The 'formation' or attack style is like an irresistible amoeba steamrolling everything in its path. Stacking accelerated metabolism, speed boosts, even adrenaline boosts if you are lucky enough to get that, too, makes it very fast-paced. AoE controls and attacks melt spawns by the dozens. Nuking in waves just speeds up the fight with all the endurance replenishing tools.

Good luck to Green Machine. Kudos to Repeat Offenders. I hope old becomes new again and all defender teams or at least defender heavy teams aren't looked at as gimp but the way things work best.

If you have 50s on the teams, why would you want to skip bosses/incarnate shard drops?

So if your friend is new, he might want to be the scrapper, and you play the kin/? defender or ?/kin controller.

Another good duo IMHO, have your new player friend play a Forcefield defender. It's a light intensity buff set, with some good chances to blast. Sonic is my favorite pairing with FF. You could then play a dedicated damage dealer. Blasters and kheldians love their bubblers. If you went peacebringer, that has a heal in the set for your bubbler. But, heck you could always take medicine since the new pool opened with inherent stamina.

The first thing I thought of was a Peacebringer. Targetted AoEs kinda look like fireworks. And, there are the seekers.