Sailboat

All my "actual" characters on my main servers get bios. I have some mule/farmer/experimental special projects that I don't bother to write anything for, and some rarely-played alts don't have anything written -- not because they don't deserve a bio, but because I'm conserving my good ideas for characters that will be used.

Sometimes the character has "filler" text for a while until I settle on a bio...one of my current favorites had nothing worth reading until level 40 or so, when I finally had an inspiration and wrote one I liked, but usually I have one worked out in the first few levels of the character's life.

The little game I play is variety -- my bio spaces are used for very different styles of writing, and although straight origin-story or biography is probably my most common topic, it's by no means the only one I use. Instead, each character's space is used to convey flavor -- that's all we really have room for anyway. Some of the styles I've used:

• A history of the tragic end of the character's people
• The TV promo spot for the character's show
• Journal entries
• Straightforward origin story
• Poem (original)
• Conversational style like the character is chatting with the reader
• Statesman's file on the villain
• The moment the character decided to become a hero
• A fairy tale

I've made several characters who were at the extremes of short and tall. Frankly both extremes have problems. The short-framed toons drive me nuts in water, as their viewpoint is partly submerged and it blocks sight very severely.

The tall-framed toons get snagged on stuff overhead in caves, and seem to move more slowly when running (same illusion that makes a jet at high altitude appear to be crawling along).

I like the extremes for roleplaying reasons, but there are good reasons to stay near the middle of the bell curve.

[QUOTE=Ryeata;2447575]

Frankly I'm glad to read Invulns have done the ITF without Fighting Pool and without IO defense bonuses. My Invuln has both of those things, and he's quite strong for the ITF and against Cimerorans in general, but it's nice to hear others have had success without tweaking their builds too much.

My Invuln has also done well exemplared waaay down, where his set bonuses and fighting pool do not work. Just using basic Invulnerability/SS, with degraded enhancement values due to exemplaring a 50 to below 20, he's held large numbers of end-draining clockworks at bay in Posi and Synapse Task Forces.

The OP might want to take a closer look at Invulnerability before playing the bitterness-at-the-nerfs card. Current Inv (after recent minor buffs) is usually regarded as the second-strongest defensive primary after a Granite-form Stone Tanker, before IOs, and it benefits well from IOs due to its layered mitigation.

But think for a second -- Inv doesn't have the penalties to offense and mobility that plague a Granite-form Tanker. That means...that Inv is probably the strongest defensive set in the game that does not penalize your offense and mobility.

Other Tankers might envy that. I know a Brute did, last time I ran an ITF with my tanker...while waiting for a rez, he typed, "HOW are you STILL ALIVE???"

Inv is a great set. There are sets out there that probably merit complaints; I don't think this is one.

Hell, after reading elsewhere about World War II land mines, I rooted around and found a server where Bouncing Betty was not taken. It was Virtue, if I recall correctly. This week.

That's a classic genre-type name on the least-likely server over five years after the game's start.

Can everyone have every name? No. But there are still lots of possibilities.

My favorites are the "Peeps! Make me an uber build!" types who return to the thread an hour later to complain it hasn't yet been done for them.

I thought about posting a longer and more detailed rant about that, but I can't be bothered. Would one of you do a really good writeup of why that's annoying, and post it here, so I can cut and paste it?

Well, there's only 4 combos. Weaken, Empower, Sweep, and Attack Vitals.

Weaken and Empower are the low-level combos. Attack Vitals and Sweep are the two that open up last.

Empower is like a little baby version of Blinding Feint. It's okay at low levels.

Weaken at least affects a crowd, which is nice; its effects will stack with your existing defense, which may be somewhat more useful to a defense-based character not yet at the soft cap. Otherwise (if you don't have defense or -to hit to stack with it) it's not very strong.

Attack Vitals is the mainstay combo most people use -- it's like a regular attack chain (add in Blinding Feint before you start!) but with bonus damage on top of the already good attack damage. Definitely use this combo all the time for chewing through enemies. The opening power debuffs defense, which is sometimes handy, since you want the rest of the powers to hit. The middle power does knockdown, although only to one target, but that can be handy on runners just starting to run. AV has some area ability with the finishing power, which is a cone. Note that the first and last powers in this combo are nice and fast. It can be tricky to line up the finishing cone without hesitating too long and letting the combo expire, so be decisive, and don't fret if you miss a guy or two.

Sweep has two area powers, and the first one knocks down, and the combo bonus knocks down again at the end, so you'll put lots of guys on their butts twice with the combo. Sweep is also the most beautiful combo IMHO, with flashy moves all around.

Some people prefer to concentrate solely on the AV combo for the bonus damage; I like the two area powers in the Sweep combo, they give you a lot of AoE potential (one in AV, 2 in Sweep) so I like keeping both combos. I find it takes too many powers to have all 4 combos, so my current DB character has 2 builds, a low-level build with the first 2 combos and a high-level build with the second two.

A source of endless confusion is that the power Sweeping Strike is in the AV combo...NOT the Sweep combo. Heh.

Well, there's the minor point that the Devs put knockback in the game. And it's in comics books, big-time. It's a major theme of comic-book combat. And movies. And every tabletop superhero game I've ever played. And in real life, when enough energy is involved.

So, other than in City of Heroes, comics, movies, superhero games in general, and real life, there's no point in knockback.

As I tried to describe in this post, there's a distinct difference between AREA knockback powers and powers that only knock back a SINGLE target.

AREA kb can be abused, potentially (if not used right) scattering enemies and causing problems for melee types. Just last night I teamed with 2 Peacebringers who viewed it as their role to use their area kb explosion to fling stuff away from my Scrapper; coupled with the fact that the mission was a custom AE arc full of slows, it was hard for me to close the range again, and I can see why that's annoying.

BUT Area kb can be used well and not be a problem at all. And SINGLE-TARGET kb is only a problem if the player using it doesn't do damage. I can see that Force-bolting a bad guy away makes the Scrapper have to chase him down. But big-damage dealers can do ingle-target kb with confidence, because they will swiftly kill their knocked-back target anyway, so it does not cause a problem for anyone but the whiniest of complainers. You break it, you buy it -- you knock it back a lot with your energy blaster, but you also waste it quickly.

Energy Torrent, your area kb attack, is the one you might have to be careful with and line up correctly before using.

Also note that you can frankenslot six level 25s to get values like this:

95% damage
95% recharge
46% accuracy
30% end reduction

That's a typical slotting I'm using right now on several characters.

That's grossly superior to SOs, and quite usable at 50 (especially if you have some global +acc from sets).

Pretty good for level 25, huh?

CMA's guide was written before the latest inflation in market prices. By the way, that inflation is driven partly by people wanting to soft-cap their Tankers, so you're shaking your fist at yourself to some extent.

Here's a hint: Reactive Armors in the high 30s will still get your resistance to the ED cap, and are much cheaper than buying 40s. If you're not married to the round numbers, shop for 37s-39s.

You can also save a slot in Dull Pain; 5 level 50 Doctored Wounds will work just as well as 6.

Okay.

But when/if Power Proliferation brings Stone Armor to Scrappers...or Martial Arts to Tankers...I'm making a Granite character who uses Eagle's Claw. And that's final.

Just be sure to get the sparkles aura at level 30.

'Cause Scourge works really well. The parts of Scourge this thread suggests improving are pretty minor. I just would hate for that to bump more needed fixes. Have a nice day.

I like a proc or two in a fast-recharging attack to help offset the Rage crash -9999% damage debuff penalty (Vet reward attacks are also good for this).

Well, whether a Tanker meets your criteria of leveling speed and endurance issues will be subjective, but my thinking is this: if you want different, go Tanker. Two Scrappers would do great -- but they're not unlike Brutes. Two Defenders will be like two Corruptors, but slower. But nothing you've played redside will be able to reach the durability of a Tanker -- the caps are just higher.

Your partner can be anything, although a Blaster might be a change of pace and would complement a Tanker well. But here's your chance to really make a stupendously rugged monster who can shrug off mind-boggling amounts of harm.