UnicyclePeon

My Thugs/Pain is level ... 42 or 43 now. I forget.

Anyway, I didn't take any of the gun attacks. I also took Share Pain, but I didn't slot it and I never use it. It just hasn't been important. I find Nullify Pain and Soothe to be much more important.

I took Stamina and Hover/Fly and Leadership (late in the build) for my pool powers.

But really, you can't go wrong. Wade in, try all the powers, decide what you like for yourself, and respec later once you feel confident.

Enjoy!

Lewis

SHORT ANSWER:

Primary: Thugs
Secondary: Traps or Storm

GET OFF MY LAWN (RAMBLING) ANSWER:

It is hard for me to be certain because a hardcore push into Masterminds is only a recent thing for me, say within the last year. I've had some masterminds plinking around at various low levels since they came out but only in the last year have I invested any time.

As beautiful as Robots are, I think I like Thugs more. I have a level 48 Thugs/Dark and he is great. I have a level 34 Robot/Traps and I LOVE LOVE LOVE him. I think I am liking Traps more than I guessed I would. I am glad I never had Poison Trap back when it was uber though. Anyway, so I SUSPECT my Thugs/Traps I have been playing recently is going to become my favorite by the time I get into my 30s on him. I've also enjoyed several /Storm Masterminds, and a couple of /Poison masterminds.

Here is what I am thinking for my favorites:


BEST FAVES:
Thugs/Traps
Thugs/Storm
Robot/Traps
Robot/Storm

LIKE A LOT:
Necro/Storm
Necro/Poison
Thugs/Dark
Thugs/Poison

LIKE MORE THAN I EXPECTED:
Mercs/Storm
Thugs/Pain

FOUND TO BE LACKING:
Ninja/Dark
Anything/Trick Arrow
Anything/Force Field

UNCERTAIN:
Ninja/Storm (too low too tell yet, honestly, just a feeling)


Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
Your secondary and primary both want you to be in melee.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't have to though. I used the melee attacks for a while but once I had Fire Imps and Hot Feet and was in my 30s, I dropped all the punches and I only use Charged Bolt, Lightning Bolt, and Static Discharge. I only use Hot Feet as a buffer, really.

Now, I'll grant you, my damage is below someone using the punches, but you dont have to be in melee to rock the bad guys.

That said, I plan to have all the punches in there again before the build is done, but the punches I prefer to be more along the lines of "it got close, guess I'll punch it" instead of "man, I took mainly the punches, guess I'll have to run in."

Anyway, its a fun combo so far. I think I'm level 34 on mine. Or 35.

Lewis

Yeah he copied some stuff from the old guide, I believe. However, it isn't totally inappropriate to mention Quicksand, in that one may often be teaming with people with other powers that you can leverage.

Still ...

Lewis

I am not talking about the chat bubbles. I'm talking about the text on cut scenes. Someone said that I had to have both NPC chat and Caption CutScenes chat in my main chat window at the bottom.

I'll have to try it with a lowbie later, in the red side snake arc. Thats the earliest one I can think of.

Thanks,

Lewis

I thought that didnt work and the NPC dialog had to be in the lower un-tabbed chat window? Or does it not?

Thanks,

Lewis

I like them off because it clutters my chatting. Rats.

Lewis

Thanks for the responses.

Does it matter which chat tab I turn them on in?

I definitely do NOT want NPC chat turned on EVER, unless its in a chat tab I never look at. Please tell me it doesn't have to be in that lower non-tabbed chat area? I want to relegate it to an un-used tab I never look at.

I can tolerate having to have Cutscene Captions anywhere, and currently I do have it in one of my captured tab chats, but does it have to be in a certain one, such as the untitled main/bottom one?

Thanks,

Lewis

All,

I started playing some lowbies on red-side recently, and I havent played lowbies on the villain side in forever. I noticed that in all of my cut scenes, I get no text, so I have no idea what the Snakes, etc, are saying.

Is there a way to turn that back on? I found some option that seemed to be it in my options, but it was already enabled.

Help?

Thanks,

Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
Insects: I’d love to be able to summon a swarm of bugs to attack my foes…maybe with some kind of end sucking (foes get tired faster from constantly swatting at the pesky swarms), maybe with electricity as your attack power so you can be a Bug-Zapper….

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd like to see some kind of Gang War power, or maybe even one of the regular minions, where they just go jump on and grapple a foe and imbed their bee stingers in the foe, which kills the foe with poison, but kills the bee too. That would rock.

After the carnage you'd have a bunch of dead bees everywhere, but also dead bad guys, with giant stingers in their corpses, still pumping away. Yum.

Lewis

/Insect/Storm FTW

[ QUOTE ]
The true "worth" of rewards is found in using them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, using your rewards to crush things more efficiently IS a form of using them. If it so happens that skipping past 80% of the TF is more efficient, so be it, but when you get to the 20% you cant skip, your rewards let you USE your abilities that much faster.

You just dont happen to like that reward.

However, there is another "worth" in rewards you may not have considered. That is the junkie / random / gambling aspect of the game. People made 100 bazillion boss runs in Diablo 2 against Hell Baal or Hell Mephisto SIMPLY because of that magic feeling where you roll the dice, stuff drops, and "YAY! What did I win?! CRAP AGAIN!!! But next time ....". People actually find that fun. I find that fun.

City of Heroes is no different. Task forces, Merits, and the random rare tables is exactly the same thing. a Junkie desire to roll the dice and see what you'll get. Using what you get is absolutely secondary if you have fun in this way, and when you do use it, the purpose is to make the frequency of your Junkie Fix happen more often. When you roll the random gold reward 20 times and 1 of them is a "good one" ... that is FUN. That kind of "man I keep getting crap" but with the feel of the occasional payout a small percentage of the time ... thats pure primate glee, boys and girls.

Check out Robert Sapolsky. He is a Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford. I saw a video on youtube where he discussed that in primates, it isnt the reward that gets all your yummy brain chemicals pumping, it is the ANTICIPATION of the reward. Once you get the reward, those levels drop, and you need to start going towards the next chance at the reward to get the mental high again. IN FACT, the less likely the possibility you get a reward, the MORE EXCITED you get, neurologically. He used it to explain both the success of gambling houses and superstition.

Anyway, I personally LOVE to see what I get when I roll on RANDOM next. So, I can understand that people want to maximize that frequency. Of course, I like to do full crushing XP/Purple/Fireworks combat fests too, and I like story (once) for any given arc or TF, but its hard to deny the fun of that "what will I get next?!" vibe.

Good times!

Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
fire/kins are still good. The real farmers use them on LT farms. These AE noobs are running 54 boss missions with tanks and emps, which is about as inefficient as you can get.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not if there are AVs mixed in with the bosses. And I've been on teams where lvl 54 bosses melt. And no I'm not talking about noob teams.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the beauty of it is that now, ANY team can farm as a team. So, in a way, farming is "worse", in that everyone is doing it, because they can. It isnt just the fire/kins.

Of course, I know some circles of farmers and some of them still simply have 1 or 2 of them run the classic maps on their fire/kins and spines/darks with only LTs and the odd boss or two, because its faster and simpler, and you have a chance at purple drops.

In a way, the AE / common denominator farming has kinda let a lot of the private farmers get some peace and quiet from the "loud" fire/kins that annoy everyone. Those loud guys seem to be moving over to AE stuff and with other builds. But hey, at least it is more egalitarian.

But, its just an impression, and I could be totally wrong.

Lewis

So, when are you going to post this bad boy now that we have reviewed it (some publicly, some private)?

Of course, holding on and scanning it more can't hurt.

Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
If your build is significantly variant from the norm then it's up to you to tell the team up front.

[/ QUOTE ]

To be fair, you can tell someone that you suck (and exactly why you suck) only if you are actually aware of that fact.

Lewis

Wow, that WAS a cool read (the link). I pretty much play like that anyway, but it was neat to see it written down.

Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
Being fair, some of these people did level to 50 the hard way, indeed, no doubt many of them did. And those people jealously and pettily guarded the power they found there.

[/ QUOTE ]

You still aren't quite being fair. I got a Fire/Psi and a Fire/Thorns to 50 the hard way, and I am not opposed to these changes. I was nervous when they were coming, but I tried them and they were fine. Nothing to get excited about.

So, I dont think your global statement is quite fair either. Technically.

Lewis

I think Plant/Storm and Plant/Rad are great combos. Juicy!

Lewis

Manic Mechanic: Calm Cretin
Wild Blossom: Wilting Prude
Sister Savage: Brother Bourgeoisie
Midnight Mary: Mid-Day Marvin (or Nikolai Nooner)
Atom Strike: Gentle Giant (also an old prog rock band!)
Blaze Craze: Winter Wisdom

Heh, this is fun. 5 stars!

Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
Bill's copy pasta pretty much covers the reasons not to allow this functionality. As far as I am concerned, we'll never allow this...but, of course, I've been wrong before.

[/ QUOTE ]

It would at least be nice to allow powerset respecs. I loathe both of my /EM tankers since the /EM changes, so it'd be nice to stay a Tanker but switch my secondary to Super Strength, or Dark Melee, or frankly anything else.

Lewis

I shelved my EM characters as well due to the changes. It went from a fast punchy set to a slow clunky set overnight, even considering only that one change.

But that's my opinion. There are plenty of others who like Dragonball Z just fine.

Lewis

I found the changes to be not as bad as I had feared. I should mention I have zero global recharge on all my Dominators, so I only have whatever recharge I put in the powers.

I am very jaded, so even though the damage buff was huge (apparently) I did not notice the damage increase one bit. I'll admit I havent been playing my Dominators a lot recently, so I am probably just forgetting how awful the damage was before.

I DID notice the higher endurance cost on /Fire and /Psy. I didnt really notice on /Thorns. However, it was tolerable, if more end cost than I'd prefer. But tolerable anyway.

So, overall .... meh. But well done, seriously, in the sense that I'm not shelving my Dominators and I can still enjoy them. The Devs have burned me before, but this time, its fine, I almost dont notice a change at all, and I'm fine with that.

Lewis

Sure. Bring it on.

Lewis

I agree that Storm is good for 2-boxing if you have more than one of them. I just think it would be a lot harder to leverage a /Storm and a /Dark together for 2-boxing.

Lewis

The problem is that /Dark and /Storm are both very "drive-heavy" secondaries. You'll get half the benefit from whichever one isnt being driven by a real person. Now, if you get double or triple stormers going, then the triple hurricanes pretty much dooms everything, so it works anyway.

One thugs/dark and one thugs/storm just wont be nearly as good if he is 2-boxing. IMO.

Lewis

[ QUOTE ]
I loved my Fire/EM and WP/EM tanks before the changes. I gave them both a few months after the changes to see if I could adapt. Haven't played them since.

[/ QUOTE ]

Same here. I tried for a long time to still like them, and I just can't stand them. I hate the slower times, it really changed the entire feel of the set from fast punchy to mega slow. (Some people liked it.) I also didn't like the animation change ... AT ALL. Ruined it for me.

While I totally understand the set was too good before in terms of damage (tho I didnt even have Build Up in my build at that time, so I never quite saw it) they changed the entire flavor of the set, and the damage is pretty crappy now considering the lack of good AoE and reliable mitigation (in my opinion).

But mainly it was just the style change. DO NOT LIKE. Shelved. Retired. I tried, I really did.

HOWEVER, that's just me. Since you dont have experience with before and after, and if you just like the look of your character conceptually, I say stick with it. Without anything to compare it to, and since they wont be changing your style/concept mid-career like they did to us, you may love the set just fine.

Only way to know is to try for yourself.

Lewis