AnElfCalledMack

Actually, all Defense Debuff enhancements and Defense Buff enhancements are enhancing the same thing (a defense modification amount, either positive or negative). It's just that for all of them but Hami-Os, you can't slot a Defense Debuff enhancement into a Defense Buff power. Of course, you're allowed to slot Hami-Os in anything that accepts one part of the enhancement, like recharge, endredux, or acc.

This post inspired me to make a Cold/Rad. No other Defender set gets a power that completely incapacitates one enemy at level 1. Seems to me that good use of Infrigidate and Snow Storm should give you a lot of survivability.

And, of course, the best mez protection is a Tanker.

I think he's talking about the apostrophe. It should not be there. Please set it free.

Nice graph. I'm just eyeballing it, but it looks to me like the biggest gain is at about 2/3 of the damage being dealt by confused enemies?

At that point, you get two thirds of the rewards, but only need to deal one-third of the damage - you've basically doubled your XP per point of damage dealt, and done so in a very high level of safety. Sounds good to me.

Lots and lots of global recharge. Invuln has plenty of spots for LotG +7.5% recharge IOs. Add Hasten and a bunch more +Recharge set bonuses, and you can get the recharge under 2 minutes.

Procs that affect enemies will check on each jump in the chain. Procs that affect you (like the Entropic Chaos self-heal proc or the Force Feedback +recharge) will only work normally for the first target. What actually happens is that the proc is checked, but if it fires, it gives the benefit to the caster of that jump: an invisible, invulnerable pseudopet spawned on top of the last target. You get no benefit, and the pseudopet dies almost immediately.

You might have missed the memo, but the first weekend in November is apparently Rikti Invasion Weekend. Four days of non-stop, carpet-bombing, Heavy-spawning, portal-summoning mayhem. So planning for a little bit of dropship raiding might be a good idea.

But if the Rikti are demanding it, then they are plural, aren't they?

Spelling: Importance: None.
Plan: In motion.
Earth: Conquest: Inevitable.

Oh, shut up. You're just annoyed you couldn't figure out that crossword, aren't you?

Word puzzle: Pointless.
Solution: Not needed.
Rikti: Effort: Not wasted.

Ovine comparison: Unwarranted.
Rikti vengeance: Approaching.
This storm: Survive: Unlikely.

Easy way to check if they're really confused. Did they attack each other? If not, they're not confused enough, and you're going to take an alpha to the face if you charge in. Basically, if you're trying to use confuses as a primary form of control, don't swing until they do.

Awesome name. I called mine Baffle - you know, the bit on the back of a speaker that means you can hear them from more than three feet away.

She's a blast to play solo, thanks to all that -res, and turns teams into wrecking balls. Had one very fun three-man team with me, a Bots/FF MM, and a Mind/Empathy troller in Praetoria. For lowbies, we were steamrolling.

And given that I19 seems set to arrive in November, January or February 2011 is a perfect time for I20. It fits too well not to be true!

Thanks for the heads-up on I20!
[/conspiracy theory]

For optimal results, frankenslot (use set IOs for their enhancement values, not their set bonuses) rather than using IOs. Sets, especially sets that contain "pure" components, and strict common IO builds (which can actually be more expensive than buying/crafting IOs from cheap sets) should probably wait until you can slot level 30 IOs - at that point, you outperform a +0 SO. Once you can slot level 40 enhancements, common IOs outclass SOs entirely.

Personally, I quite enjoy not having to reslot my powers every five levels, so I tend to frankenslot ASAP. You can usually get a cheap Def/End, Res/End, or Acc/Dam for about as much or less than a 25 and a 30 SO. You can even get some helpful +HP, +regen or +recovery by two-slotting some of the sets available.

They still need to animate Taunt or Confront with the whip out. Could be a simple clone with the whip sitting in one hand, but that might have clipping issues and if they're making five more powers, why not have an "aerial whip crack" taunt animation?

You're fire/fire, and you still need more offense?

Because a TAoE debuff on a long timer is another clicky to manage. Sometimes, you'll "waste" it on a spawn that isn't going to last the full duration, and not have it up for the next spawn. Other times, you'll hold off and make a spawn take longer than it has to. Ally-centred toggles are a really interesting mechanic, and I'd like to see more of them in the game.

Liquefy and Clarity, though, need looking at. Liquefy is nice, but needs to recharge faster - compating it to other "mitigate one alpha" buttons available to Defenders, the recharge is really disproportionate to the effect. Repulsion Bomb doesn't debuff as well, but the stun duration is about 250% longer than Liquefy's hold... and the recharge time is one tenth of Liquefy's. Repulsion Bomb opening every spawn is possible if there's no-one on the team who can take an alpha. EMP (arrow) recharges in a similar time and cause a recovery crash for 15 seconds... but they deliver a 22 second magnitude 4 hold unenhanced. They don't just mitigate an alpha - they shut down a spawn entirely, quite possibly for long enough to kill them. Fearsome Stare is permable, but that's Dark Miasma for you.

Clarity, on the other hand, is overly redundant. There are times you'll be incredibly glad you had it, but they're few and far between. Dispersion Bubble gives +Res along with the mez protection. Would it kill Clarity to give a little something so that putting Clarity on someone with mez protection (either from your bubble or one of their own toggles) isn't almost always redundant? Maybe a little +Res(Psi)? Sonic doesn't give much Psi resist, but it seems thematic that a bit of mental Clarity could help against mental attacks. Or if the point of the power is to help stop people being overwhelmed by heavy mezzers in large numbers, maybe give it some +Res(Hold, Stun) to go with the extra protection?

20% chance every 10 seconds, though. Very nice when it does happen, but not something you want to rely on. You'll get occasional spikes of endurance, but sometimes the procs won't fire and you bottom out. Better to deal with the Sappers or whatever before that happens than to really lean on the proc.

Performance Shifter: Chance for +End has a 20% chance to give 10 End every 10 seconds in an auto power. That means you average out 2 end per 10 seconds, or 0.2 EPS, regardless of the value of the power it's slotted in. Stamina has a base +recovery of 25%.

The formula is MaxEnd * (1 + RecoveryBuff) / 60, so the break-point between EndMod IOs and PS procs is when the enhancement (0.424 of the power's Recovery buff) gives an extra 0.2 EPS.

0.2 = (MaxEnd/60)*(0.424*PowerRecovery)
12 = 0.424*MaxEnd*PowerRecovery
28.30 = MaxEnd*PowerRecovery

For a character with no MaxEndurance bonuses, that means the IO is better if the power's native recovery bonus exceeds 28.3% - so Quick Recovery gets more from the IO, but Stamina prefers the proc even on the first slot.

If your maximum Endurance is 113.2 or more, though, the EndMod IO pulls ahead in the first slot. Regardless, if you're three-slotting stamina, QR, or whatever, the third IO is hit by so much ED that it's only worth 0.1412 actual enhancement, replacing the 0.424 in the eqation, and giving a no-MaxEnd-boost break point of 84.99% native recovery boost. To get that down to even Quick Recovery's 30% boost, you need 283 Endurance at maximum. So yeah, the PS proc is definitely a better deal for the third slot.

Also, the PS proc is not unique. You can slot it in both PP and Stamina, and enjoy an extra 0.4 EPS. If you only have one, though, put it in PP - lower base values means smaller gains from normal enhancements, and a bigger relative gain from procs and their constant boosts.