Sardan

The main thing I'd like to see changed about all powers that reduce you to zero End is for your toggles to say on. I can't stand being detoggled. I love the change they made to being mezzed so that you don't detoggle. It's easy enough to pop a blue after nuking but it's the 10 seconds of retoggling after that that annoys the heck out of me. If they made that single change, I'd nuke whenever it was recharged. As it is, I rarely use nukes.

I agree with Supernumiphone's comments. Just wanted to add one thing:

Arctic Air is a key power. It carries a massive auto-hit recharge debuff of around 50%. So enemies will go through their initial attack chain at full speed but then incoming damage drops dramatically.

There's also a 50% chance for a fear effect so some NPCs caught in AA will be trying to run instead of attack, and there's a 30% chance of confuse, and confused foes of course are not only not attacking you, they're helping your DPS.

And yes, the End consumption is huge. I ended up 6 slotting AA:

Malaise Illusions End/Conf
Malaise Illusions Chance for Psionic Damage (proc)
Cacophany End/Conf
Perplex End/Conf
Befuddling Aura End/Conf
Coercive Persuasion Contagious Confusion (purple proc)

Everything except the purple I did at level 30 so I've got 85% End reduction and 85% confuse enhancement. I'm sure you could do better by using max-level IOs.

The Contagious Confusion proc is a great investment because it has its own separate 30% chance of confusion.

I don't recall how often AA's "chance of" happens. I believe most IO procs in a toggle trigger every 20 seconds but hopefully someone else can chime in on AA's attack rate, i.e. how often it's rolling for its own inherent fear and confusion effects.

At lower levels when you don't have as much control or survivability, I recommend teaming with a tank or brute who can draw initial aggro. Then you jump in and stand beside him and let AA do its thing. Great combo.

I vacillate between 3 favorites:

SS/Shield Brute

Mind/Fire Dom

Fire/Kin Corr

Wow, even though I play blueside, all my favorite ATs are from redside. How did I not notice that before now?

I can relate to Nyx's complaints. I've run a few characters through the Incarnate trials but that does tend to trivialize older content. I'm playing the game far less lately. I didn't enjoy Keyes and can't stand the though of one more BAF or Lambda. I am eagerly looking forward to being able to roll a Street Justice brute or scrapper but apart from that my main hope for continuing fun is that the devs will start to add new content specifically aimed at Incarnates that *isn't* Incarnate trials.

I'd love it if there was a new tougher zone with task forces that didn't explicitly require Incarnate abilities but were balanced around Incarnate-equipped teams.

The iTrials have their place, but I like the idea of content designed for smaller person teams at that difficulty level too. I remember the joy of a taking a small team of friends through a tough (for that pre-Incarnate era) arc filled with Malta. We weren't a huge random collection of strangers. We knew each other and had fun playing together working our way through content that was very challenging. I miss that.

Fire/Fire/Fire is fun because after you get Rise of the Phoenix, dying can just be part of your attack chain.

I'd like a Big Government theme. How about IRS Control and Homeland Security Assault?

I don't have any specific comments, other than to say it's a great combo. I leveled one up into the high 30s, then set him aside because I got sucked into all the Incarnate stuff on a few other characters.

Well, different Doms lend themselves to different playstyles. For example, my Mind/Fire I play as a pure ranged character. So no PBAoE for me.

I view getting enough recharge for PermaDom to be a great long term goal, but you're certainly not gimped without it. But is it worth it? Oh yes! I just love being mezproof and able to hold bosses with a single hold.

Regarding attacking/teaming, you build the Domination meter via attacks. So using lots of fast recharging attacks early builds Domination fast. There is a bonus for each team member so that on a big team you can build domination shockingly fast, usually after the first spawn or two of a mission.

Instead of S/L defense, can someone post a build that has high ranged defense? Seems like in the Incarnate trials there's a whole lot less S/L damage. Or is my impression wrong?

I remain concerned about the new player experience. I know they're doing cool stuff with the new tutorial, which is a great start. But because the game is so heavily instanced, it just looks bad when that player exits the tutorial and the zone around them seems dead.

We need a "team looking for more" type of function so that a solo player can enter a queue and have a decent chance of being put on a team.

The typical responses like "join global channels" aren't sufficient. Most players don't frequent the forums and they don't know how to find or participate in global channels.

I think this is a great game but I am convinced many prospective new players will try it for an hour or two and come to the erroneous conclusion that no one is playing it and they'll quit and never look back, which will be a shame.

If you want an easier ride leveling to 50, WM/Will. I don't have one, so I can't really give tips on it. But the mitigation of WM combined with the all-around sturdiness of Willpower should make for a very happy journey.

If you want a character that you can really pimp out at 50 to be ultra hardy and crank out a ton of damage, I heartily recommend WM/SD. (Besides, having a mace and a shield is also just a classic badass look!) Leveling SD is definitely harder than Willpower. Loading up with Lucks makes a HUGE difference since once you have most of your layered defenses a single Luck will softcap you. Don't forget the trick of emailing yourself inspirations too! It's very helpful in those earlier levels when you can't carry a ton of them. Endurance is also an issue, especially if you take Hasten.

All that gets cured at 50. You can use set bonuses to hit the softcap without gimping your damage output, you can cure your endurance woes with the Cardiac Alpha slot. The effective softcap is higher than 45% in Incarnate stuff, but getting all 3 level shifts plus the Barrier power will get you back to godmode. My SS/SD is able to solo spawns in the "collect glowie" phase of the Lambda trial with ease.

The one weakness SD has compared to a set like Super Reflexes is lower defense debuff resistance. If debuffing foes get a couple of lucky hits in, your defense can crumble fast. It's rare but it happens.