Seldom

********************************************
Vote # 235
Dominators + They may be squishy, but they're manipulative little buggers
Tankers - They may be crunchy, but their minds are often so vulnerable
********************************************

Blasters 29
Defenders 20
Tankers 41
Dominators 27
Masterminds 4
Stalkers 19

********************************************
Vote # 228
Dominators + There's a name to live up to
Tankers - Let's be realistic. Tanks don't hit hard.
********************************************

Blasters 26
Defenders 20
Tankers 45
Dominators 26
Masterminds 6
Stalkers 17

********************************************
Vote # 193
Dominators - Stop hitting yourselves! *confuse* Start hitting yourselves!
Tankers + The immortal that hits with mittens
********************************************

Blasters 24
Defenders 17
Tankers 44
Corruptors 4
Dominators 24
Masterminds 11
Stalkers 16

********************************************
Vote # 183
Tankers - Slow and steady...is slow and steady.
Corruptors + The only archetype with a built in kill-shot bonus.
********************************************
Blasters 24
Defenders 17
Tankers 43
Corruptors 7
Dominators 22
Masterminds 13
Stalkers 14

********************************************
Vote # 177
Dominators + lockdown>aggro
Tankers - The turtle can't always win.
********************************************
Blasters 23
Defenders 16
Tankers 46
Corruptors 5
Dominators 22
Masterminds 13
Stalkers 15

********************************************
Vote # 175
Dominators + It's hard to argue with somebody that can twist your mind to their whims as they punch/blast your face.
Blasters - Defiance can't save you.
********************************************
Blasters 23
Defenders 16
Tankers 47
Corruptors 6
Dominators 21
Masterminds 13
Stalkers 14

********************************************
Vote # 125
Dominators+ helpless enemies make easy fights.
Defenders- forgot to carry break frees
********************************************

Blasters 24
Defenders 12
Tankers 39
War Shades 4
Corruptors 10
Dominators 17
Masterminds 13
Stalkers 12
Widows 9

Being stuck in the central zone, I can't make it to the startup on Friday. If you do run on Sunday, I'd be glad to participate.

Best of luck to you folks!

Eh. I know the mutation/science thing can be about as tricky as the science/tech. Or the weapons specialist verges between tech/natural.

Here's how I see it:

A mad scientist mutates himself. He may be a mutant now, but because it was his scientific process that mutated him, I label him 'science.' Without his process, he'd never have mutated. I have a mad scientist character that uses radiation. He uses gadgets to do this, but take those away he'd quickly use his scientific knowledge to find new ways of doing the same thing. It's his science know-how that is his source.

Say you have a mad scientist poisoner, who uses a high-tech toxin gadgets for his powers. He's locked away and disarmed, but escapes. He can either (a) go to the storage closet to make new poisons quickly, or (b) find where his gadgets are stowed, and retrieve them. If he chooses (a), knowledge with or without tech, I'd peg him as 'science.' If (b) I'd peg him technology, as he relies on the gadgets he made.

"Captain Smackback?'

Totally.

Funny thing with knockback: it's really only a bad thing for melee types, and if there a surfaces for bodies to slide against, even that's debatable. Heck, you have enough knock back on a team its mititgation power becomes so obvious it can't be ignored. If you have a team where all the enemies do is try to get up, you're not in that much danger. The only trick is, is young team strong enough to deal with the mob merges that can happen? Considering the best knockback sets are storm and forcefield, then the answer is usually "yes."

Three? I get four! Swift, hurdle, health and stamina! (♥ Drain psyche: never had to touch fitness.)

...On my fire/fire I'll pick up smoke, then take the melee/smoke/ST immobilize earlier.

One my Plant/earth? No idea. Perhaps the fighting pool, just for kicks. (sorry, that pun was free, and unintended.)

My Fire/Ice will pick up powerboost faster, then the ST immobilize/smoke as well.

My Elec/elec never needed fitness, and my Mind/energy was too young.

Dragging and dropping a full set of armageddons to a friend while the "drag and drop" bug was in the game, effectively deleating the entire set.

I had to chuckle.

Perma-dom has several perks:

• Permanent boss-level mez on direct controls (more on this later)
• Permanent status protection
• High recharge=lots of powers easy to access (Controls, especially good ones, tend to have long recharge times)
• Frequent endurance bar refills

Elec/doms get a lot of these, but the first item is where it's tricky. Your sleep patch is not your dominator. As such, hittting domination does nothing for its mez power. It's a 'pet' that does its own thing. Your chain induction likewise has no domination benefit. Or conductive aura. Your synaptic overload is only changed on the initial hit- something in its power stops there.

An Elec/ perma-dom has the other perks, but the control is a lot less obvious in its change. Mind/ control is ALL direct (excluding levitate) mez, so the percs of the extra mez mag/duration stand out more. Electric control is a good set, but more about lots of 'weak' controls adding up to total debilitation. As such domination's up front "BAM! You're going nowhere!" gets less mileage.

The downlow on Energy melee: it's a good single target set, but not very good at handling multiple targets. It has good burst damage, but that's set in two strong but slow to activate powers. (total focus/energy transfer) As such, use 'em wisely! If you use the lower tier attacks to pepper the weak targets, you'll build up fury steam..once fury is high, build up and use your big hitters on the heavy targets.

Your big hitters are best used as openers on an undamaged target, as they take a while, and will take out most of the target's hp. (Provided it's not an AV) Once the damage is inflicted, then you can judge whether to follow up with as second heavy-hitter or just a low attack. This way you don't waste time with the long windups just to kill a sliver of health. This is especially important on teams, where allies will finish stuff off for you often. (This avoids corpse blasting.) The higher the team's damage, the higher tier you save your heavy hitters for.

As far as sets go, EM/ is more boss killer, less minion lawnmower.

Super reflexes takes until SO's to 'feel' tough, and will take longer to feel invincible. If you knew this stuff, I apologize...just wanted to let you know how the stuff might work. (I use EM/ on my main brute, but my /SR experience is on a scrapper.)

Crab strengths:

• Is an Arachnos soldier (comes with awesome gun/leadership skills)
• can reach tank level resilience (depending on build)
• mixed between your crab+gun, more aoE attacks than single, making you capable of destroying large mobs of squishy foes with ease.
• capable of bringing quite a few pets to the table
• strong heal that also increases HP

Crab weaknesses:

• Not that good at melee
• high endurance costs if you grab all the AoE's they can have
• medium single target damage
• lack of reliable burst damage

Bane strengths:

• Is an Arachnos soldier (comes with awesome gun/leadership skills)
• Strong melee abilities
• strong stealth abilities
• good burst damage
• capable of two strong debuffs, toxic in some attacks

Bane weaknesses:

• starts out pretty squishy
• lack of healing or resistance makes defense failure dangerous
• a bit more limited pet/AoE options

My Elec/ dom is too low to give full, in depth analysis on, but my /psi dom has seen a ton of use, so I can give some of a rundown on that end.

/Psi is one of the best defensive secondaries, in my book, but is distinctly average on the offense front. Its cone and PbAoE attack are both good against crowds, psy shockwave being a 16 target attack rather than the average 10 with a pretty reliable stun to boot. Many attacks do a pretty good -recharge to slow down incoming damage, and a reliable immobilize and KB is in there too. You have a decent array of ranged attacks, and two slowish melee ones that still hit pretty hard. That said, the burst damage is not there. Also, when something resists psionic damage, it really resists it. In such cases the damage output can become frustrating.

All in all, the attacks from /Psi will never wow you. But they're still decent. The biggest draw for me is still the +regen, with 10 targets you can bounce to full health in seconds...and -regen is a great tool vs. Av's.

In theory, a Elec/psi would be devastating vs. an AV. Most av's don't resist immobilize, which you have 3 of, you have a ton of sapping powers backed by a strong -recovery, and some -regen to boot. But that's paper, I don't have experience in practice. But note that by 50 the AV sapping becomes significantly more difficult as their resistance to that effect goes way up.

Don't forget the new arcs: Heroes in Paragon get an arc dealing with the teleport system, villains in the isles get an arc about the leviathan.

Ahhhh. Yeah, the least run was less than stellar. We had a darned fine team, but had some communication trouble and really let the time crunch get to us. (The frustrating game bugs didn't help there.)

Next time, we need to make sure everyone's on the same page at the onset of each mission. It was obvious that there were some pretty different strategies people were used to, so the assumptions of what actions to take were different across the board.

It's a tough line as there's a lot of patience needed, (especially on the last mish) but I realize the time people have is limited. Communication is key, a shared plan means less time wasted, fewer confused players. Bah, again, sorry that we didn't pull through.

I'll be there as well.

reposting times, just so everyone's on the same page:

5:00 p.m. PST / 8:00 p.m. EST

Is it weird that this thread made me think of a baseball coach mastermind, spittin' his tobaccy on all his foes?