Psylenz

Traps time bomb is still better than Mastermind's Poison>poison trap. THAT's the dud of the last 78 months.

It should be noted that Rad/Rad benefits greatly from procs in neutrino bolt and choking cloud. Fitting a proc into lingering rad isn't farfetched either.

I think Bots/Dark, Thugs/Dark, and Demons/Thermal can all do the job. Each has its own quirks. Hell on earth and gang war are big pluses to the thugs and demons. It would be an interesting demonstration to experiment with all three on a level 20 or bust mentality.

Fearsome stare is not up every fight, but then it's not even available until you get to level 20 on red-side.

Tar Patch, Fearsome Stare, Shadow Fall, and Howling Twilight are all very good, but the dark user is compelled to take Hasten. I did some analyzing, and you can 'over-slot' hasten in anticipation of the level 20+ respec. In other words, you are limited to 3 recharge slots in hasten only if you are devoid of respec possibilities.

I agree with the Earthquake-Freezing Rain opening. The debuffs to resistance and defense are known, but the knock down can be critical. Follow with your stun and earth AoE controls, but save the stone cages for later in the effectiveness of freezing rain and earthquake. You want to knock them down, not just immobilize them.

I have to remind myself to use it, too. It's a big component of my super-sapper build. Conductive aura, static field, chain fences, and jolting chain are key ingredients to draining spawns down to 0 end. Even one EC user could drain Eochai and Jack to pansy status during Halloween. The knockdown is useful, but not overwhelming. Knocked down foes cannot fight back. When you get the gremlins stacking their jolting chain on top of yours, the result will be much more noticeable for direct knock down mitigation and end drain.

Seebs is right; if the groups chases the tank around the corner, it will be a long time before they run anywhere away from the tank now standing in caltrops.

I am of two minds when it comes to herding tanks. Herding is fine, even desirable where there are two to three groups that are close enough that aggro will spill over to squshies working on one spawn already. Herding is abominable, and perhaps this was the case with seebs team, where the tank uses every aura attack, trick, AoE he can to get more than the 16 max taunt group following him, clearing out whole rooms. That not only puts all the squishies on the team at risk that use AoEs but can overwhelm the tank's ability to taunt and eventually defeat the tank.

It's not an easy backstory, but I love Bots/Storm. Ranged knockback blasters don't mind the storm effects at all. It works together so well.

If you can't get your head around that Bots/Traps is a beast, too. This is uber all around.

Thugs/poison is an iconic pairing. The thugs keep each other alive fairly well except for the suicidal pyromaniac. Noxious gas was made for a Bruiser.

Ninja/Forcefields is another stretch, but the stacking defense is useful. Bubbles protect the kamikaze ninjas about as well as anything.

Necro/Dark is a fantastic pairing. The smaller zombies fit well within shadow fall and twilight grasp. This pair has its own vibe, but its extremely sturdy.

Imperial Defense Force - Heavy Troopers. I HATE the missile swarms like the Malta have. They can completely obscure the screen.

I like the debuff attributes very much on defenders. Three AoEs in an kill zone of defender debuff can make a big difference.

The following suggestions are my personal opinion and do not reflect the point that je saist is always right...

Fire/Dark corruptor: This villain is super effective out of the box. By level 6 you have a fire blast, a fire AoE, a fire rain, a self-heal, and a tarpatch. I dare any blaster to put that package together.

Bots/Traps mastermind: Bots have lethal resist, and make most of the low level red-side groups. Traps start out a bit slow, but when you get your acid mortar and forcefield generator, it's off to the races.

Electric Control/Electric blast Dominator: My new favorite son, the super sapper with a bag of effective controls. The electric melee attacks make it especially good. It's easy to solo, too.

Not enough recharge in accelerated metabolism.

Not enough recharge in hasten.

Not enough slots in lingering radiation.

Not enough end reduction in choking cloud.

You need some end reduction in tactics.

2 X Thugs/dark would be amazing. You get an early heal, tar patch, darkest night, and howling twilight to really soften up alpha strikes. Whenever I19 hits, you would NOT necessarily have to take stamina at level 20. Good luck.

There are a lot of good things to power boost with a rad defender. Power boosted accelerated metabolism, power boosted lingering rad in AV fights, as said, power boosted EM Pulse, and a power boosted fallout/vengeance combo isn't a bad little trick either.

Choking Cloud seems to be underrated for what it does. Frankenslotting is what this power craves. I don't understand what thinking got into rad emission players that close, melee range is evil. The safest place for the rad emission player is next to his radiation infection toggle anchor running his choking cloud <period>. Slot end cost reduction. Slot hold duration. Slot the lockdown proc for mag hold. Slot the holds with the psy damage procs. This power rocks!

If you think it's still a puny hold, then try 'softening up' the spawn with a little EM Pulse and see how many bosses you can handle. On a defender you should have a stun, like cosmic burst. On controllers, you have single target holds to stack with the choking cloud. This power dominates your foes like few others. Six slot and enjoy!!

I enjoy my traps/dark a good deal. Tenebrous tentacles really fit with the other traps. Web grenade is tremendous in AV fights. You can immobilize AVs and keep them from running around and adding extra spawns.

I don't have all three whips on any of my demon summoning. I would sacrifice a whip before I would give up hasten.

No, protector bots in City of Villains had Dispersion Bubbles. The protector bots have NEVER had dispersion bubbles in City of Villains once it went live.

When City of Villains first came around, I tried my best to love an Ice/Ice dominator. There wasn't a huge backlog playerbase experience shared on the boards yet. I leveled by the seat of my pants. I notice that Ice sword circle had a lot of damage and was confirmed on the boards it was the highest damage attack. Then, I learned through experience and other observative doms that you could take the power but most likely would fail with the power since the doms at that point couldn't handle the aggro they created by using ice sword circle.

Now Going Rogue comes out, and I convince myself I can tame the savage dominator. This time I try EC/elec. First, I notice that neither short circuit nor ball lightning are in the toolbox. Second, I get Conductive Aura, and I don't care about those silly powers at all. With Conductive aura, Jolting chain, chain fences, and good old Tesla Cage, my EC dom is an end drain BEAST. My take on it is, prior to building domination I can still end drain hard targets, whereas holds, sleeps, confuses, immobilizes require double application. EC is a big success.

I don't have a lot of experience with APPs. As such I took Link Minds at level 41 on my first dom the EC/elec. I might respec. Psychic, Fire, and Ice APPs are VERY enticing. Even a dominator sleet should be an amazing tool in the dominator tool box.

I can attest to the effectiveness of Dark/ice and Dark/dual pistols. Of course if you switch it around, a Fire/Dark Miasma corruptor is extremely nice, too.

It has been my experience that DE don't like fire or negative energy attacks. If you grab a teammate with those it can help.

There are many factors that make me a dedicated CoX subscriber: $15/mo for entertainment is cheap compared to other various entertainment outlets. I would sooner give up cable TV than CoX. Second, currently the new issues are free every 3 months except for City of Villains and Going Rogue, which I got for a bargain. The community and the folks who keep the game running are superior in many ways. This game never became Ultimate Online, may it rest in pieces.

We have discount packages for 3 mo.s, 6 mo.s, 12 mo.s as I am unaware of any updates to those. I would gladly pay for a lifetime subscription that was equivalent to 15-18 mo.s of full-rate charges. The charging for booster packs doesn't bother me. I have purchased some, not all. I trust to a relative high degree that if there were F2P accounts which did have to pay for new issues, had certain limitations on their characters, costumes, customization, AE play... that it would have minimal effect on the current subscriber community. Do you think NCSoft wants to drive off established paying customers? I don't mind paying for extra character slots on servers; I know that space, maintenance, and time involved in the transaction cost our hosts something.

There are a few binds you should have. If you notice, you should have 3 default macro buttons: Attack my target, Follow (which you need to fix), and Heel (follow/passive stance).

Starting out on robots, I use attack my target frequently to focus fire on desired targets to knock them out one by one. This is NOT suggested during boss fights.

The default follow power is broken, as it default to follow/aggressive stance. You should right click on that macro button and make it follow/DEFENSIVE so that you are in body guard mode. This means when attacked, your bot will attack until dead the attacking foe. As long as he does not aggro another attack, he will return to you and guard against further attacks.

You should also have a GoTo macro. Petcom_all Goto Defensive is my preferred macro. This sends the bots to a specific point and will guard you if in range, and also that location.

Sometimes the bots overaggro. They get in over their heads. The quickest way to regroup is click the Heel macro, even a couple times. Once you see them coming back to where you are, click the bodyguard follow (follow/defensive stance) since it takes a few seconds for them to engage bodyguard mode. If you try to reel the bots in with just the bodyguard follow, it won't override them from defending themselves from attacking spawns.

You can also program macros and binds for individual bots/pets. I suggest you look at Sandolphan's keybind guide for further binding.