StratoNexus

The ITF lacks mezzing and is readily and easily achievable for an all blaster team.

A LGTF would be annoying, but enemies won't last very long. Rikti mez a lot, but they aren't going to mez the whole team, and since it only takes two blasters to wipe the spawn, the Rikti would have to mez better than 6 of 8, which is unlikely. The Hami might be tough, but everything else should be readily doable.

With Dull Pain active, Tough and Resilience, I can take more than two AV Sm/Le hits on my Regen without dying. I think I can even take up to four, IIRC, although I would probably pop Recon before I got to that point. If I was facing multiple AVs, I could take the two big hitters and still be alive.

I have seen regens drop like a stone in the face of AVs, but I do not normally have that issue; I figure its due to making sure DP is up and my Sm/Le resists.

Actually, IME, the rest of the team has to pay attention as well if a Dark is your primary mitigation. With a buffer, the team can be a bit crazier, because if you split, the buffs are already up, no need to wait for the debuffs to be applied.

SG teams I run on are pretty crazy. There are at least four of us who pretty much just run screaming at the enemy no matter the AT we are playing. We like to push beyond our and our teams limits. We don't like waiting on others to start the fight and we are not fond of "gather" or "wait for the debuffs". In this circumstance, buffs are pretty valuable.

My love for buffs not withstanding, I do not understand why someone would not also value debuffs like Freezing Rain and Tar Patch (and Fearsome Stare and Thunderclap and Hurricane and DN to help mitigate some of the three or four spawns we have inevitably aggroed).

Architect Entertainment. There is one in Atlas Park.

Awwww. Bummer.

Powersink is an auto-hit power that recharges in a base 60 seconds which grants you a base 25 end for each target hit but costs 13 end to cast and has a 2.03 second cast time.

My biggest problem with it has been having enough enemies to fuel it while solo. With the difficulty slider, I believe this may not be an issue anymore. I also have never slotted it as well as I could, because I do not fight single hard targets a lot.

Figure with slotting you can return ~34 end every ~30 seconds off one target, ~80 off two targets.

Edit: Which I see you have edited into your post, so like, nvm.

That is not a shame, that is a good thing. Here are these other-worldly crazy folk that your high level super has to go stop.

They are like gangsters. *sigh*

I like the new versions better, especially since I imagine we may see more of them in the future. Now they seem worthy of inter-dimensional travel for high powered capes.

As a counter-point, I remember a lot of people wanted power customization and people thought it would never happen. Many wanted to create their own content, and that feature has been revistsed a lot since release, and while some forumites concentrate on the exploit fixes, the devs keep adding ways we can customize our missions and enemies (creating new exploits they have to deal with ).

I remember people said they would not revisit merit rewards or only revisit them to lower them, which has proven spectacularly incorrect. (Great job devs, the Ouro arcs are very much worthwhile now, both because I can get XP and the merits are respectable in most cases).

Playing lowbies anymore you just breeze through the low levels because they keep looking back at that old XP and leveling system.

They revamped the Hollows and Faultline and the RCS, added gang fights to Perez, have Fifth Column fighting Council in zones now. They added a flight pack seller to Grandville and FBZ.

They revamped side-kicking and removed the level requirements from hazard zones.

It seems to me they are constantly reconsidering and revamping older stuff, trying to make the game more appealing and fun.

I miss base raids and would like to see the CoP trial. That being said, I think the devs track record on revisiting older stuff has been mixed, at worst (and I would say its actually pretty decent, with a few disappointing exceptions), but understandably focused on where they believe their work will have the most impact.

Possibly. I have been content on Unyielding up to this point, but the new settings give me options I never had before. I doubt I'll bump it up higher than +2 level and 6 man spawns, but I am sure I will occasionally run in situations with tougher and more enemies on a few PuGs. I'll pay attention to see if I am inadequately controlling/killing spawns.

That is good to hear. Definitely makes me sure that CC would be the answer for me if I have any problems. I also read your guides for the slotting advice. The toughest choice is what to drop for it, I think it would have to be Fallout.

Yeah, I generally only have FF up every other spawn, and even with my perma-AM/Hasten build it will only be up every 27 seconds, which means it won't be recharged when I am ready to jump into the next spawn. I usually just RI something, dive into the center and start holding stuff. It does mean I miss out on some containment that spawn (although I switch targets constantly, using RoF and Char on different targets, so I am setting containment up that way a bit), which FC or CC would solve. Of course, if I turn my difficulty up to +2, it might just take me long enough to kill one spawn that FF will generally be availiable every spawn.

I agree that the containment is important, which is why I do not save Flashfire in case of emergency. If an emergency happens, hopefully the tanker and/or RI/EF/LR/Fissure are enough (they usually are), but if not, I have Vengeance and Fallout.

Thank you all for the advice and discussion. It is very helpful for me to hear other peoples opinions and especially useful when they back it up with in-game experiences so that I can relate it to actual use and decide whether or not it would fit with my (and my friends) playstyle.

While I have had the rare bad experience with PuGs, normally if I am on a PuG, as long as the enemies are dying and the team is not, no one complains. Of course, it helps that I lead most PuGs I am on.

If almost the whole spawn is stunned and immobilized, what do you need the hold from CC for? By the time my Flashfire wears off, the minions are dead and any surviving Lts are held and/or seconds away from dead.

I understand the stacking on a boss, but as I stated originally, I normally only run on small teams, so my boss fights are few, and then Char is plenty. I have run on big teams: with a tanker, I have no need of CC; the few big teams I have been on without a good alpha eater/aggro tanker, I think I could have made good use of CC. I am concerned once I turn my difficulty up, but I was thinking of only making the enemies spawn as if I was 6 players, which still keeps the boss count low. I was thinking about going +2, which would spawn +3s as well, and that might make the duration of Flashfire shorter than comfortable.

If I were to drop CC in, I know it needs slotting. I would drop Tough (and then Weave), which I have found to be very helpful at mitigating those surprise adds and the damage of those first few seconds before I have the lockdown/debuff applied, but CC does appeal to me as well. How would I slot CC, and is CC still useful vs. +2s and +3s?

I use RI that way as well, but I have found it works fine without Cages, and it is often convenient to allow the enemies to move anyway so they collapse into a tighter spawn for easier removal.

This is the biggest time where I wish I had Cages, so I could get contained HF while saving Flashfire for an emergency. Fortunately, RI has been strong enough for me in most emergency situations.

That is true. I have never teamed with another Rad anything, much less another Fire/Rad, so I would not often (or ever) get to benefit from stacking CC. My Rad/Ice defender, OTOH, is made to team with other Rad/Ice defenders, and the stacking leadership and AM make any control unneeded, while multiple ~damage capped Frost Breaths eliminate spawns in seconds.

If I am already diving into the middle of enemies, already have plenty of mitigation to survive, and am already killing them very fast, why do I need more control?

The Devastation: Chance to Hold procs are great for my Fire/Fire blaster, who can use help in the mitigation area. My Fire/Rad controller doesn't seem to need more control, even when faced with adds and rooms of doom. I will indeed keep both those powers in mind if that changes and am very glad to hear people feel they work well as it helps influence my future decisions.

Well, I feel I received some useful information. I will admit I was a bit startled by so many comments on my lack of a travel, but that is not a big deal, I just felt like explaining that I (and my teams) have zero difficulty with or without a travel power.

The most unusual thing in my build seems to be the lack of Fire Cages. I have loathed AoE immobs for some time, although in the case of contained Hot Feet I have a much higher tolerance for it. Of course, I always seem to team with those Fire controllers who run Hot Feet, use Fire Cages, and then stay at range anyway. I did want to take Fire Cages, but since I rarely have anything escape my Hot Feet anyway, I do not see the point.

Choking Cloud is often referred to as skippable, I am not sure why I need to hold enemies that are either stunned or debuffed so much they rarely hit. THe imps also help keep some aggro off me (although not a lot). I like Choking Cloud, though, and I am glad to see some recommend it, so I will defintely keep it in mind as a possible addition if I do have troubles.

I like to get information from people, even if they have playstyles that diverge from my own. I can parse the differences in playstyle pretty well normally.

I can sort of understand where Celidya is coming from. Buffs allow the whole team to do some crazy things without fear. On teams like that, it can seem hard for a Dark to get their debuffs down.

When I run on teams like that, it is not unusual for a Dark (or Storm or Rad or TA or Cold or FF) to engage the next spawn in order to get it grouped/debuffed. When you have buffs turning most of the team into tanks, you can enagage multiple spawns easier and therefore we often do, which makes a good debuffer still very useful.

DPA (or DPAS, Damage Per Activation Second) is best used in actual attack chains. It is optimal to figure out which of your attacks have the highest DPA (which might need to include procs). Then string together the highest DPA attacks. Then figure out how much recharge you need to get there. If you could cast Blaze-Blaze-Blaze, you would. Since you can't,, you have to fill those seconds between Blaze with lesser powers, but you might choose to shoot for recharge (and most, if not all, optimized builds do) so that you can drop the lowest DPA powers from your chain (and maybe your build).

Since recharge is something you can slot for, figuring out your DPC (damage per cycle) is irrelevenat in most circumstances, since you can alter the recharge of powers a lot.

Tactical powers, like snipes, fall outside of discussions like this, the question with snipes is whether or not they do their job of elimnating an enemy without retaliation (and whether or not a power like that is a good idea from a game balance perspective). If it has a good tactical use, it is fine if its DPA might be lower than "normal" attacks.

I think its more that they don't want you to be unchallenged while you farm. Although, adding the ability to go -1 belies that supposition.

You fighting Crazed?

I would think the bosses would spawn, but would be downgraded to Lts.