Rigel_Kent

Psi is one of the hardest sets in the game to find a guide for. This is probably related to the fact that Psi is one of the worst sets in the game. Sorry.

If you can find an Ice/Elec guide, that may help. Psi is comparable to Ice, just a bit worse. Use these substitutions:

Ice Bolt -> Psionic Dart
Ice Blast -> Mental Blast
Frost Breath -> n/a
Aim -> Psychic Focus
Freeze Ray -> Scramble Thoughts (except Stupefy/Absolute Amazement instead of hold set)
Ice Storm -> Psionic Tornado
Bitter Ice Blast -> Telekinetic Blast
Bitter Freeze Ray -> Will Domination
Blizzard -> Psychic Wail

You will probably, in the course of planning your build, find yourself taking more secondary powers, slotting secondary powers more, taking secondary powers sooner, and slotting secondary powers sooner. If so, this is fine. You're probably better off.

Looks okay. Only thing I would definitely change is the slotting on Regeneration Aura. Regeneration Aura is almost identical to Instant Healing, and also affects your nearby pets and teammates when it fires. I'd consider RA a high priority power for a solo build. You can probably move some slots from Fortitude.

Also consider 1-slot Absorb Pain instead of 1-slot Heal Other.

Well, there may be hope. Maybe, someday, one of the devs will actually roll an /ice blaster, get him to 50, figure out how they're actually played, and realize the mistake they made with Frozen Aura. Someday.

In the meantime, maybe you're just doing the wrong tasks. Between the holds, AoEs, and Ice Patch, I can't imagine an ice blaster being useless in any way on BAFs, Hami raids, ITFs, mothership raids...

I like this idea.

And they can do away with the 'xp while exemplared' option while they're at it. A single on/off switch is all that's needed.

Dark Blast

Balance Issues

• Dark Pit is a ranged AoE stun power with a target cap of 10. All ranged AoE mez powers have a target cap of 16.

Replacing Dark Pit with Aim is not a net positive. Unlike defenders, blasters can pick up a big damage self-buff in almost any secondary. Good luck finding a fast animating, decently fast recharging, ranged AoE, 100% chance to hard mez minions power in any blaster secondary, ever.

True, Dark Pit still sucks with fewer than 4 slots. But that stopped being an issue the day IOs went live and 5-slotted stun powers became the fast lane to cheap recharge bonuses.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for [Chill of the Night] in the secondary.

OK, I looked through all the blaster secondaries, and all the buff/debuff sets. I'm assuming you're more into the will channeling, energy construct kind of stuff, and not so hung up on the color green (which you can get out of power customization anyway). Here's what stood out to me, hopefully this helps you brainstorm ideas.

Fire Manipulation and Ice Manipulation will give you swords out of thin air.

Devices, Traps, Storm Summoning, and Dark Miasma create various little bundles of fun from thin air.

Darkness Manipulation is still unknown but may also fit the bill.

Ninjas includes Archery attacks, though with no ability to customize your henchmen, will require a lot of handwaving to call your henchmen constructs.

It's official: Dark Blast, like Psychic Blast before it, will have powers removed to pad the secondary.

We have enough cookie cutter aim-3blasts-2aoe-1mez-1snipe-1nuke primaries already, so I was really looking forward to another controllish primary (like Sonic) for blasters. Dark Pit's always been an underrated power, and got significantly better with IOs. Oh well.

Dark Blast isn't doomed to bottom tier yet, but it will need for NightFallTorrent to not be as miserable as it sounds, and it will need the hold to be a solid 3rd blast.

Anyway, if you've been wanting to make a Dark Blast corruptor, but holding off to see what happened with the blaster primary, I think it's safe to go ahead and roll that corruptor now. If you're waiting to see what happens with the blaster secondary, though, we'll have to wait a little longer and see!

As a general rule, tweaking individual powers is a bad idea when there are broader imbalances to address. Better to step back and deal with the big picture first.

For instance, the sudden appearance of non-stacking, non-autohit, single-target debuffs that started appearing after PvP was introduced. The idea doesn't work for Weaken and Envenom; it doesn't work for Sonic Siphon or Infrigidate, either. These powers all have recharge time constraints, and should therefore all stack. Stacking doesn't make Siphon Power or blast debuffs overpowering (or even particularly popular), not in PvE, not in PvP either -- any PvP balance fears about stacking debuffs are unfounded.

For another instance, powers that have the same name but, confusingly, do different things because one version of the power had to be nerfed for whatever reason. The fears leading to these nerfs never pan out -- if it's balanced for one AT, it's balanced for everyone else, see Psi Blast for blasters. Poison Trap doesn't make Traps overpowering (well, at least not more overpowering than other high performing buff/debuff sets), and it'll be fine for Poison too.

In sum, there's a more systemic problem in buff/debuff power design, a problem likely arising from unfounded PvP balance fears. Fix this problem system-wide, and this may just fix Poison without having to fine-tune or change powers.

Welcome back!

First the good news: Psy Blast amazingly hasn't been nerfed since you left. Except for blasters, and to a lesser extent, for widows. For defenders, Empathy's still okay, Psy Blast is still awesome.

Now the bad news: The usual IO sets for Empaths are expensive as duck. Most IO set bonuses are garbage, resulting in huge demand for the few IO's with great bonuses, specifically +recharge bonuses. This drives the market price of those IOs sky high. And, just your luck, +recharge bonuses are precisely what Empaths really need. Some may see this as a market self-correction for the overpopularity of Empaths. Fat lot of good that does you as a concept player, though. Sorry.

Anyway, your first rung on the ladder will be Frankenslotting. This is a strategy where you slot enhancements based solely on their direct enhancement bonuses, with no regard to set bonuses. It results in a mix of basic IOs, mismatched set IOs, and HOs in most powers. You have lots of HOs banked up, so it probably won't cost you much to achieve a Frankenslotted build. Centrioles in Psychic Scream, Membranes in Fortitude, Peroxisomes in Dominate, random Heal/Rech IOs in Absorb Pain and Regeneration Aura, random Damage/Rech IOs in Mental Blast and Telekinetic Blast and Psionic Tornado, etc., still give you a very solid, very endgame-capable build.

Next, start picking up any desired procs and bonus IOs. This will include the Luck of the Gambler Defense/7.5% Recharge Bonus IO, which should probably be your first goal after you have a nice Frankenslotted baseline. This step will be quite expensive, so the time it takes you to save up the influence or alignment merits will be plenty of time to research your final build. Unless you're playing 24/7 with a catheter, you'll probably score a freespec along the way, so don't worry about going through multiple respecs over time.

Finally, your fully IOd out build will revolve around recharge set bonuses. You can safely ignore almost all the set bonuses in the game: you don't need 2% fear resistance, you don't need 1.5% recovery, you don't need 3% enhanced sleep duration. Recharge is number one. Other worthwhile bonuses you may pursue, depending on your personal taste, include maximum hp, accuracy, damage, and either positional or typed defense. All other set bonuses are a trap designed to distract you from a functional Frankenslotted mix and/or to waste slots better put elsewhere and/or to funnel your inf to evil marketeers.

Remember Reward Merits? They've become somewhat deprecated. The usual method of buying rare (red) recipes with merits is now to convert Reward Merits to Alignment Merits, then get the recipe at a discount. This method roughly doubles the buying power of your Reward Merits. This method is also the only way to buy very rare (purple) and "PvP" recipes for merits. If you have more than 100 Reward Merits stocked up, you may want to start converting them now, since you can only convert so many per day. Note that common and most uncommon recipes (the cheap ones) cannot be bought with Alignment Merits.

As far as the incarnate system goes, it can be overwhelming to just jump in and start trialing and crafting right away. For now, just do Mender Ramiel's arc (either solo or in a team) to unlock your Alpha. You can worry about the rest later when you're ready.

Some Paragonwiki reference links:
IO sets that give recharge set bonuses - Check the market as you plan your fully IOd build. IOs on this list that cost the most money are probably the ones you want.
IO recipes that cannot be purchased with Alignment Merits - The box next to B.O.T.L.E.R. in Fort Trident in Atlas Park is the alignment merit vendor.

Less useful, but still nice:

Microfilaments can enhance slows, as long as they accept endredux enhancements. (There are no slow/end IOs, just slow/end/rech, which aren't useful if you don't care about rech. Chilling Embrace, perhaps.)

Ribosomes can enhance damage, as long as the power accepts endredux enhancements. (Just in case you can't slot a damage/endredux IO for some reason. Dark Servant, perhaps.)

Membranes can enhance recharge in Vengeance. (So can Def/Rech, Tohit/Rech, and Heal/Rech IOs.) Keep in mind that due to a crappy old non-stacking hack, you are allowed to use Vengeance again while an old Vengeance is still going, but it will have absolutely no effect except the heal.

No HOs enhance knockback/knockup. Sorry! But this is actually nice for anyone who wants to enhance mez in a power but not the knockback. (Fissure, perhaps.)

I slot Hurricane with Membranes -- yes, Membranes. This is so I can turn it on and turn it back off again after one tick, letting me tank an angry melee swarm of -tohit and -range hosed enemies who aren't being repelled, aren't being knocked back, and can't run away to attack from a distance. Then, when the team finishes up the last spawn and finally catches up to me, I can drop FR on my own position and /em popcorn. Well, there is no /em popcorn, but if there were, I would totally be doing it.

I'm notorious in some circles for heavily slotting Vengeance and putting it on auto. 24/7. Even soloing. No matter how much I crank the difficulty, PuGs only wipe if I'm the first to 0 HP. Everyone in the game should have Vengeance on auto. 24/7. Okay, okay, maybe not while soloing.

On my /Ice tanker, I skipped Ice Patch, 6-slotted Frost for range, and alternate between hovering up and blasting with Frost, and hovering down and meleeing. I figure my blappers are so aggro hungry, if I play my tanker the same way, I'm doing the job right.

On my Plant/Empathy controller, I skipped Heal Other and slotted Absorb Pain for recharge. People say, oh no, I can't heal myself when I use Absorb Pain? I say, with up to +1500% regeneration and harder controls than a $5 Wii game, what do you need green numbers for?

Finally, I always slot knockup powers for more knockup. Because I can.

No thanks. If I wanted someone else to write my player character's origin story for me, I have a thousand different console and portable RPGs for that. I'll let you tell me how I met my Pokemon and became a trainer, but don't try to tell me how I became an MMORPG superhero.

The bad news: TA/Psi/Psi is hungry for your power choices. Choose your power pools carefully. Whirlwind and Fly and Invisibility may be infeasible.

* Could you do without Maneuvers? To me, at least, Vengeance is the whole point of Leadership, anything less is a set mule.
* Could you do without Invisibility? Super Speed plus Stealth, or Super Speed plus a Stealth proc IO in a travel power, softcaps your stealth against most critters.
* Would you consider a rocket pack instead of Fly?
* Hasten, Grant Invisibility, and Air Superiority are nice to have but may also need to be put on the chopping block.

The good news: TA/Psi/Psi runs nice and lean on slotting. Lots of autohit powers, lots of powers that can only be enhanced for one useful thing. If you're skipping TKB and WD, that indicates you're shooting for a more mez/debuff oriented, less damage oriented build.

* Flash Arrow: Autohit in PvE. Can't stack it. Can't slot it for range. Hostile procs spoil its sneakiness. 2 or 3 tohit debuff enhancements is all you need.
* Glue Arrow: Autohit. Slot for recharge and a bit of slow movement.
* Ice Arrow: Stacks with EMP Arrow, Dominate, and Telekinesis, but not with Scramble Thoughts or Psychic Wail. Slot for hold duration and a bit of accuracy. Recharge too if desired. Slow movement is probably not useful.
* Poison Gas Arrow: Autohit. Stacks with Mass Hypnosis. 2 to 3 recharge enhancements is all you need. Sleep duration too if desired.
* Acid Arrow: Can't stack it. Just slot for a bit of accuracy. Defense debuff too if desired. Damage is probably not useful.
* Disruption Arrow: Autohit. 2 to 3 recharge enhancements is all you need.
* Oil Slick Arrow: Autohit. 2 to 3 recharge enhancements is all you need. Add a bit of slow movement if you want to be able to movement floor enemies without Glue Arrow. Add damage if you have a way of lighting it. Defense debuff too if desired.
* EMP Arrow: Mez nuke. Slot for hold duration and recharge. Endmod is probably not useful.
* Mental Blast: For stacking moderate -recharge on bosses. Slot for recharge/endredux and a bit of accuracy. Damage too if desired.
* Subdue: Immobilization does not proc reliably (only 80% chance). But the magnitude and duration are decent. Slot for immob duration and a bit of accuracy. Damage and recharge/endredux too if desired.
* Psychic Scream: For stacking heavy -recharge on 10 enemies at once. Slot for range, recharge/endredux, and a bit of accuracy. Damage too if desired.
* Psionic Tornado: For stacking moderate -recharge on 16 enemies at once. Slot for recharge/endredux and a bit of accuracy. Damage and knockup too if desired.
* Scramble Thoughts: Stacks with Psychic Wail, but won't stack with Ice Arrow, EMP Arrow, Dominate, or Telekinesis. Slot for stun duration and a bit of accuracy. Recharge too if desired.
* Psychic Wail: Another mez nuke. Slot for stun duration and recharge. Damage if desired.
* Dominate: This will be your best single target mez. Stacks with Ice Arrow, EMP Arrow, and Telekinesis. Slot for hold duration, recharge/endredux, accuracy. Damage if desired (recharge is too long for a standalone damage power, but its fast animation makes it decent in a chain).
* Mass Hypnosis: Sleep only, no debuff. Won't be useful every spawn, so recharge enhancement is optional. Sleep duration is preferable, since if you have to use MH, you probably want to keep stuff mezzed a long time. Don't forget accuracy.
* Mind Over Body: Armor toggle. Resistance and endredux.
* World of Confusion: Sucks.
* Telekinesis: You will be using this more for repel than for hold, to keep enemies bunched together. Slot for recharge, so you can turn it off when you've pushed the enemies sufficiently together, and have it come back in time for the next spawn.

Suggested slotting order:
1) 1 or 2 recharge in powers with 45 seconds or longer base recharge times (except Mass Hypnosis).
2) Accuracy in powers that need it.
3) Psychic Scream.
4) Psionic Tornado (except knockup, that can wait).
5) Any other powers you want to slot for damage.
6) Any other powers you want to slot for mez duration.
7) Everything else.

I'm all for a direct port of Dark Blast to blasters.

But if it gets gutted like Psi Blast, to cobble together a quick and easy Dark Manipulation secondary, no thanks. If TT gets shunted to a secondary, for instance, it's clear people will be rolling Fire/Dark instead.

Traps

Bugs

• Poison Trap does not slow enemy movement speed. It does not accept invented enhancements from Slow Movement sets, but it accepts generic slow movement enhancements, which do nothing.

Coding knockback enhancements to increase both magnitude and chance to proc would go a long way to help Energy Blast. Gale, Shockwave, etc. scatter less and mitigate more than Energy Torrent.