Psylenz

I have been playing my warshade on Virtue and enjoying some good leveling. I just hit level 47. I foresee a respec coming for inherent stamina so I have been playing around with slotting, which is more than "more is better" since you want so many slots for so many powers. I tri-form.

About half-way through getting slots into the dwarf form powers, I realized I could put resistance in dwarf from itself for survivability even prior to getting eclipse. I then turned my attention to Dark Nova. I don't have all attacks 6 slotted, and I don't have all attacks with 90% accuracy. Researching Red Tomax, the base +tohit in Dark Nova is 9%. Using two generic tohits (since sets aren't allowed), that adds around 50% more tohit or 13.5%. I know there is a lot of flexibility in playstye and slotting of how you play your forms, it seems to me 13% on top of what I can afford slotting into 4 attack powers is a pretty big deal. What am I missing?

For big game, especially at the lower levels:

Siphon Power drains the targets damage potential; you live longer.
Siphon Speed is an irresistible debuff from what I last heard. This power rocks AVs worlds.
Transfusion isn't the biggest -regen power, but it does knock a bit off although -regen is usually resisted. You need to combine it in fast rotation with siphon speed to get your repetitions up.
For most bosses and big targets, I usually use the chem rounds for the damage debuff. Combined with siphon power, it should keep you alive longer. Now if the foe is Batzuul, of course, I would use the cryo rounds since the cold damage would be resisted less in theory.

I agree with Earth. The defense debuff in earth control powers make everything hit so much better. Radiation, Cold, and Kinetic are all great pairings with it. I guess for a beginner I might suggest Cold secondary because a lot of it is intuitive.

When you have a teammate that makes it easier to shoot stuff and harder for teammates to be hit, it is easily appreciated. Quicksand is probably an underrated power, but it does so much more than just slow foes down.

I recently had an eye-opener myself: web grenade. Stops running AVs in their tracks AND recharge debuff.

My knee jerk reaction was Bots/Dark, but you are avoiding masterminds.

I would also suggest Night Widow or Crab SoA.

Dark Pit stacks with howling twilight, too. I use howling twilight early and often, just like how I vote in Chicago.

There are a number of mastermind primaries that mesh quite well with dark miasma. Play them all if you like to get a feel for them. In my opinion they are all very capable just depends on your temperament.

Robots/dark - very powerful. Positioning with the knockback, you eventually have a combo with incendiery missiles on tar patch that is quite lovely.

Necromancy/Dark - Your minions will all tend to move into melee. With the combines powers of your debuffs and heals around yourself, your mastermind will be safe enough and will want to heal the minions and stay right in battle with them. Sometimes you might have to nudge your second tier guys to more immediate melee, but I don't find the zombies all the difficult to manage, maybe just a touch more than robots.

Demons/Dark - This comination is newer, but it's a very powerful and effective synergy. Again, your mastermind will want to stay right in the thick of things keeping the demons healthy. In addition your ember demon will shield and heal YOU, too. Your demons are bigger than other mastermind pets, but don't take a back seat to anybody. Your guys are most effective in melee range. I don't monkey much at all manuvering demons, BUT I often split their stance, meaning I put the top 3 big boys on Attack/Aggressive and the little three first tier guys on defensive/follow. Obviously I don't do this in boss fights. I want that Demon Prince to fire off his first attack on the first target and that is usually his single target ice hold, and that suits me very fine.

Thugs/Dark is another powerful set. The only thing I micromanage is the bruiser. I have a Goto/Aggressive in situations where I want him to go and grab aggro and take the alpha strike. I don't do this every spawn. The twilight grasp coupled with the enforcers leadership and the pet aura IO sets make this set up extremely tough to kill. The added layers of tohit debuff and resistance debuff counter any concerns you may have with dealing a lot of lethal damage. Thugs just deal a lot of damage, period.

I think you hit on two potential winners: dark and storm. You can add traps to that also. Secondaries that I would choose from are Rad blast, Dual Pistols, Sonic blast, and dark blast (especially on a trapper).

Looking at your requirements, dark has a good self heal, Storm does NOT in the storm set itself, but you could take medicine. Traps has a regeneration beacon, but not an actual heal per se. The debuffs from Storm and Traps but no heal never precluded my defenders from soloing.

Traps doesn't have stealth. You can pick up the run or jump stealth proc and pop them in sprit if you like. Traps is very gutsy. You eventually get seeker drones which are primarily a distraction while you set up your kill znne. Before that, with just a forcefield generator backing you up, your trapper marches in, points at all the foes, and announces this is the day you all get arrested, and then drops acid mortar and commences the beat down.

You can run a dark miasma defender without dark blast. Ice, Dual pistols, Rad, Electric, and Pyschic blast are a few you could try.

Bots/Storm mastermind works for me

Back in the long, long ago, I started a Forcefield/Psychic blast defender as my first defender, first character on my first MMORPG. He is very good at what he does, but he isn't the best solo'er by any stretch.

My first storm defender on Triumph became my main since I could solo and team. He is Storm/Rad blast, since we didn't have ice blast on defenders then. Storm is great and has a tool for almost every occasion.

My next big project was the Rad/Rad defender. When I2(?) first came out, there was a great upheaval in the community about how hard things were made. My little Tachyon Bug would bravely street hunt, walking up to red con minions with purple lieutenants, apply his radiation infection toggle and slowly, steadily and safely defeat spawn after spawn, with very little debt, high risk, high reward. (We couldn't select mission difficulty then, so street hunting gave good rewards.) He really changed as his powers expanded, choking cloud being a whole new deal. I am a stormy at heart, but my Rad/Rad defender is definitely my go to guy for AV/GM fights.

When villains came about, my first villain I rolled was a Robots/Poison mastermind, but soon a great many of my villains were using dark miasma. Radiation hasn't been ported over to masterminds yet. Dark was the defining set for masterminds, although players definitely give /dark a run with traps, poison, pain, and thermal now. I took back that experience and quickly leveled a Dark/Ice defender to 50. I never did finish up my Dark/dark defender to 50 but it's personal taste and alting. I know Dark is as every bit as successful as Radiation Emission (or Traps, or Thermal).

This is my current Rad/Dark just hit level 44. This is basically my cheap IO build to get me to 50. I am also a big fan of choking cloud and procs.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.803
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Terrabyte: Level 43 Natural Defender
Primary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Secondary Power Set: Dark Blast
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Power Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- H'zdH-Heal(A), H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx(3), H'zdH-Heal/Rchg(3), H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(5)
Level 1: Dark Blast -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(7), Entrpc-Acc/Dmg(7)
Level 2: Accelerate Metabolism -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(9), RechRdx-I(9), EndMod-I(11), EndMod-I(11)
Level 4: Gloom -- Acc-I(A), Mael'Fry-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Mael'Fry-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), Decim-Acc/Dmg(15)
Level 6: Radiation Infection -- EndRdx-I(A), DampS-ToHitDeb(15), DampS-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(17), DarkWD-ToHitDeb(17), DampS-ToHitDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(19)
Level 8: Super Speed -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 10: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(19), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 12: Lingering Radiation -- TmpRdns-Acc/Slow(A), Acc-I(21), Acc-I(23)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Tenebrous Tentacles -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(23), Dmg-I(25), Dmg-I(25), Dmg-I(27)
Level 18: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(27), EndMod-I(29)
Level 22: Choking Cloud -- NrncSD-Acc/EndRdx(A), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(29), NrncSD-Dam%(31), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(31), G'Wdw-Dam%(31), Lock-%Hold(33)
Level 24: Enervating Field -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(33)
Level 26: Night Fall -- Acc-I(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(33), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(34)
Level 28: Fallout -- Dmg-I(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(36), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(36)
Level 30: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(36)
Level 32: EM Pulse -- NrncSD-Acc/Rchg(A), NrncSD-Acc/Hold/Rchg(37), RechRdx-I(37), RechRdx-I(37), NrncSD-Acc/EndRdx(39), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(39)
Level 35: Tactics -- AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(39), AdjTgt-ToHit(40), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(40), AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 38: Blackstar -- Acc-I(A), C'ngBlow-Dmg/Rchg(42), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(42), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(43)
Level 41: Power Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43), AdjTgt-ToHit(43)
Level 44: Temp Invulnerability -- Empty(A)
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- ULeap-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 47: Ninja Run

Dark Miasma, as a defender thrives once you have fearsome stare. You fear the spawn, drop tarpatch on the spawn, and then have your way with the spawn like a marauding pirate. Darkest Night is best used on bosses, not so necessary against minions as they drop so quickly.

Tactic 2, when you have howling twilight, you can neuter a big spawn, even with no downed teammates. Stun the spawn, if you have another attack that stuns it will stack with howling twilight (autohit) and stun the boss as well. HT has a terrific amount of burst -regen to drop bosses.

Most of the time I usually pounce with the dark powers. Prior to level 12 on a dark defender you can pull with darkest night around a corner or obstacle on to your tar patch to minimize incoming damage. In my opinion, darkest night has more fear effect on spawn's AI causing them to run away more frequently. Added spawns can provide hilarious amounts of aggro.

Tactic 3 at higher levels, short of having the fearsome stare/howling twilight alpha busters, you can summon the Dark Servant into spawns for instant tohit debuffing. It's another option, but Fluffy taking the alpha from the Psychic Clockwork King can be preferable to you taking it.

Radiation emission:

Radiant aura - PbAoE heal, no tohit check, but weaker than Twilight Grasp
Accelerated Metabolism - this buffs recovery of endurance, recharge of attacks, and shortens duration of mezzes. Dark has no equivalent.
Radiation Infection - work very much like darkest night, these both have the tohit debuff. Rad infection also debuffs defense while darkest night debuffs damage potential.
Lingering radiation - debuffs speed and regeneration. Howling Twilight has the same effect with stronger effects but also a longer cooldown.
Enervating Field - debuffs resistance and also damage potential comparable to tar patch but it's a toggle.
Mutation - teammate resurrection power. Howling Twilight is an AoE rez that can revive multiple teammates to go along with the other debuffs.
Choking Cloud - PbAoE hold that applies ticks of Mag 2 and Mag 3 holds. It can carry multiple procs to aid with holds and psionic damage. It's also an end hog, but it's worth it to me.
Fallout - this power does AoE damage in the area of a defeated teammate. It's high damage and is usually coupled with vengeance and mutation for a big turnaround for the team.
EM Pulse - The top tier Debuff. It's a PbAoE hold, debuffs recovery and end, and does special damage to robots. In my opinion this power is underrated.

All that said Radiation Emission is a powerful successful set as well as Dark Miasma. Rad's debuffs include powers that can allow you to hit more successfully, but Dark Miasma is no slouch and can be just as successful as its other defender primary cousins.

Traps/DP is a very solid defender set. You still have lots of travel options with the different costume additions: mechanical wings, rockets boots for fly; piston boots for superjump. Your costume parts can make these powers work for your tech guy.