Scientist

What you need to realize is that there is a fairly lengthy math formula the game uses to figure out whether you hit something, or something hits you. It uses Accuracy in one spot, and ToHit in another spot, and it has different dependencies on them.

Arcanaville wrote a long (I'd guess 10 pages, been awhile since I read it) article on the forums defining the differences and their consequences and what kind of critter modifiers there are. It takes that long to explain fully, and is hopefully stickied in the guides section. And it took her a couple of years to use that analysis to convince the devs to change their basic defense formula so that defense actually works decently now against higher con foes.

The short version is what you got, and the formula means that Lord Recluse in the STF, for example, will always have around a 10% chance to hit you even if you are at the defense cap (over 300%, I believe) and he is at the attack floor.

Very entertaining guides, with useful information.

I'll offer my thoughts on a few of the powers, particularly with reference heroside where some teams don't have such great damage output;

Ice
Snow Storm - I found this somewhat more useful then Silas did, both for spawn pulling (as he mentions for the Rad toggles) and to keep critters corralled in Sleet longer if the team isn't super fast taking them down.

Kin
Increase Density - This power actually has pretty decent resist values, higher then scrapper armors, at least for Smash/Energy which are fairly common. If, and only if, you have slots to spare consider slotting it up for that time when you need to let a blaster tank, say.

Siphon Power - Once fulcrum shift replaces it against spawns, this gets most of its use against AVs. After stacking them, it reduces their damage output substantially, which can be handy for lightweight tanks. Plus with only one target to work with, its pretty efficient damage stacking for your damage dealers.

Rad
Rad Infection - I definitely suggest tohit debuff slotting priority over defdebuff, if well used its like granting SR level defenses to the whole team. Not as good against AVs any more, since they resist debuffs so strongly, but much much safer for doing spawn debuff pulls then Enervating Field, both because they'll do less damage to you and because they'll miss on more mezzes against you. Although its slow to animate, the timing works out well if you have a good rythem with the tank and start it as they start running in.

Lingering Radiation - Handy to keep in reserve if another spawn aggros, since often your toggle debuffs are tied up on the main threat. That lets you reduce their threat substantially, though note they'll still get a ranged alpha off on you.

Its been great with my friends (since they have many alts of many levels on many servers), we can team with whichever of our characters we feel like playing. And when someone we don't know sends a tell asking if they can join, we can always let them without having to worry if we can sk/exemp them.

Also encouraged us to pick up a few TFs we missed on various characters, since now they can still progress while doing so. That should make it easier to recruit for TFs in general.

And, as others said, makes PUGing much easier. I can invite that lvl 23 who is lft even if we currently have a mix of a 31, 35, and 42.

If I wasn't doing the builds along the way, I"m sure I'd have 1B on a few chars, but I tend to have both Inf generating activites and build related activities going on the same characters, sometimes with the same bids (e.g. buy 10 of something I need 2 of and sell 8). Since you have to wait a long time to get some items at particular level ranges for good prices, I need to have those bids up for weeks, and might as well have something else going on on the side.

"Able to defeat anything in the game" depends a bit on what you are trying to fight, Joshx.

If you want fast defeats of lots of minions and lts, which is ideal for farming lots of drops, the best combo is almost certainly a fire/kin controller. This is not an ideal character for soloing "hard" targets like AVs and Giant Monsters, though.

The best heroside combo for hard target soloing is probably Ill/Rad controller, there was one awhile back who soloed Lusca, who is essentially 9 Giant Monsters in one. It took them 6 hours or so, but I doubt theres another heroside AT who can do that. You already mentioned having a MM, which is the best villianside AT for hard targets.

And if you want the most powerful *team* aiding character for high end content like TFs and such, a rad/sonic defender or, with the right build, cold/sonic is probably best. Rad will tend to be more popular/well known, cold is arguably better with a really maxed out build, but check old defender forum threads for both sides of that debate, its fairly fine hairsplitting so I'd go play preference on that one. Flip that and make that a corruptor for villianside, as MMs don't tend to be popular on teams.

Yeah, the devs actually intended those temp powers to be harder to get then they've turned out to be, because they expected more PvP there (there was a comment from IIRC Castle long ago when people were asking if Shivans and Nukes were overpowered, no link, sorry).

That said, my first suggestion is to do them during off hours, early mornings and such. Second suggestion is use /hide to hide from searches, no need alerting others there that you are in the zone to be hunted. Third is run the patrol missions for the temp powers to have some stealth, at least you aren't visible from quite as far away.

And I do recommend keeping stocked up on Shivans and Nukes for anyone of appropriate level range, I've seen a couple of TFs saved from failure on the last mission because of those, when there weren't enough members/damage/etc. left for the final AV(s). I get few enough opportunities to do TFs that I'd rather not lose them.

I suspect one of the reasons for the difficulty in writing a "master guide" would be that there is such a tight interrelationship between "whats a good build" and "what kind of playstyle do you like".

I had a friend who ran a humanform PB to 50 mostly solo on high difficulty and loved it. I'd go nuts, I'm not that fond of melee characters and not as good as he is at playing them. I set up keybinds and macros for form shifting on my WS and did triform all the way there, and loved it when I wanted a challenge (I alternated with easier characters. . . ). I do agree that a WS benefits from an expensive (i.e. high recharge) build more than a PB, because theres a substantial survivability difference between blasting in Novaform with capped resistance all the time vs 70% or so of the time, and getting out more Dark Extractions = more free damage.

I'm now running a triform PB to 50, and don't like it as much as the WS because if I'm playing a Kheld I'm almost always playing them on a team and the PB doesn't get as much boost from that. I'm also having to form shift even MORE to heal folks as well as fight, which cuts into what I can do in a fight, and I don't like that the godmode tier 9 power locks me into humanform, which doesn't have enough slots to actually do much useful there. But there are also advantages, in that I don't have to aggro the whole spawn to get some buffs, which is nice if the team doesn't have a tanker, say.

To conclude, I'd say that the key to Khelds is to be prepared to use a lot of respecs as you see what works for your particular playstyle.

A question, Anshar; when I imported your data into Mids, it showed soft capping only with unsuppressed stealth active, even with the 7.5% from a Protector Bot bubble, which doesn't appear in Mids. Do you have soft capping some other way I'm missing, or were you just figuring on having it for the initial alpha?

For folks with less Inf, by the way, consider the Black Scorpion patron for Scorpion Shield, the only defense based patron shield. That makes it easier to self cap, as well as lay down Trip Mines uninterrupted.

Survivability-wise, by the way, something in his build that is important is that the bots are around soft capped defense. To do this its important to slot Protector Bots for Defense (they double stack on everything but you, so double that 7.5% above to get a true defense value) and use the +Defense pet proc. Thats actually more important to the kind of fighting hes talking about then soft capping yourself, unless you are taking a taunt pool power like Provoke and fighting AVs to make sure all the attacks come on you.

Most fights you see in PvE are fairly straightforward, hitting one spawn at a time, a boss or two. Sometimes another jumps in, or they all like to stay at range and teammates are getting shot, or theres an AV or two there, or something else that means "This is going to be a tougher fight." Thats a good time for pets, even if you don't focus on maxing out the recharge. I didn't take all the possible pets, though, skipped the Patron ones.

It should be very possible to take at least 2 pets and still have a pretty much full AoE attack chain with some effort on a +recharge IO build. Maybe a few single target shots between, but theres almost always some tougher foe to focus those on anyway to get everyone to drop at once.

Another suggestion I have is use dual builds.

Take the advice others are offering and have a build with several attacks well slotted, but minimal armor slotting. Thats still plenty tough enough for soloing or small teams with decent players. Don't expect to take foes down as fast as a blaster, but if you did, why would anyone play a blaster?

Have another build with early armors, well slotted, and early Tough/Weave, well slotted, and Taunt. When you are on a good sized team, focus on situational awareness; is there another spawn nearby thats about to open up on that blaster who didn't see them because hes facing the wrong way, is there a boss about to mezz and stomp the defender keeping you alive, etc. Shift targets with every swing to get punchvoke. Trust me, a large team isn't hiring you because you will be taking down the mobs, they are hiring you to keep them alive while they do it. And if you do it well, it will be faster, safer XPs for everyone involved, and they will friend you and look for you next time.

One other suggestion on Mutio's build; frankenslot Eclipse with the various Resistance/Recharge IOs, those usually aren't too expensive since most Resistance powers are toggles. Gets you right up there to ED capped Resistance and Recharge with 4 slots. Maybe one Acc if you plan to buff off of AVs sometimes, where you don't have a whole crowd around you, but if you can get some decent global Acc from set bonuses save the slot.

I think the downside of Traps for really dangerous AV fighting would be the need to run in close; a Rad can stand off and use all their debuffs, even AM has a larger range then the trigger radius of Poison Trap I believe. Its also tougher to use on GMs because they tend to run around when you are debuffing them unless you have a tank pinning them pretty well, based on trying to solo a few on my bots/traps MM.

The advantage Traps would have over Rad is the ability to pin (most) AVs with web grenade, my Rad defender has died more than once when an AV decided it didn't like debuffs and went zooming off through enemy spawns. Thats also an indirect damage multiplier, as it allows things like Flame Patches to work more effectively on them. Mezz protection is also very handy, of course, though Accelerate Metabolism goes some way towards making up for this with its halving of duration on enemy mezzes.

I suspect Traps will end up like Cold, very effective with the right build in the right hands, but losing out in the general popularity contest to Rad for end game content just because a Rad almost requires a deliberate effort to build or play badly to not have its debuffs up all the time on hard targets. Thus you are more likely as a team leader to get a "competent enough" one.

That said, I'm leveling a Cold defender right now and would probably start working on a Traps if I didn't already have a Traps MM because I'd rather play on a team where the leader knows the sets well enough to believe my team search description that I'm built for good buffing/debuffing.

You are thinking along the right lines, a Bane is a lot easier to solo then a Crab, but Crabs are awesome on teams. Perfect for Dual Builds. Just make sure the Bane build can exemplar well, a lot of times when you want to solo its maybe to pick up a lowbie mission you missed (maybe Wheelers mission for the badge/accolade).

As far as IOs, I worked first on maxing out the Crab side, since most of the really hard content is teamed and/or TFs so thats where you need that edge. I am just now working on the Bane, since as mentioned they actually solo pretty darned well without any special effort on uber IOs.

My suggestion for an Emp is Sonic; the cone sleep is nice if you need to solo, or just if you want to prevent additional spawns, since you are likely to be watching the whole fight to some extent. Its also fairly low on AoEs, which is nice since you don't want to draw a ton of aggro as an Emp. Finally, its helpful against AVs, where an Emp doesn't provide a ton of damage multiplication compared to some other sets.

Although sonic also works fine for a kin (note that you can do Fulcrum Shift on a sleeping spawn without waking it up), rad is nice as well because you can get a decent AoE set without taking Haze so no knockback, Irradiate fires right where you tend to want to be (i.e. in melee) and all the defense debuffing helps you hit with the kin powers. Rad also takes Achilles procs, so you can do some -resist debuffing on AVs. Neutrino is also nice and fast, leaving time for the frenetic pace of Kin powers.