Adeon Hawkwood

I slotted 4 bits of Dark Watcher's Despair for the set bonus and an Absolute Amazement: Recharge/Accuracy to bring up the numbers. In general you mainly need recharge and a bit of accuracy. They are pets so they will benefit from Tactics but not Accuracy set bonuses so unless you have a Nerve Alpha boost I'd try to fit in at least 1 SO of Accuracy, they do have a base accuracy of 1.2 but a bit extra is useful.

EDIT: Also they can take the IO Devastation: Chance to Hold proc but my testing showed that it did not appear to work correctly in them. I don't know if it's a case of that particular proc not working or a bug preventing any Ranged Damage sets from working, in either case be careful.

I'd also agree, wait until you have OSA before giving up. Trick Arrow isn't a great set overall but OSA is a great power and shoudl help if you're feeling a lack of damage.

I will occasionally unsummon my Drones in tight maps to get room to maneuver but for the most part I keep them out. While the damage is useful, the main reason I keep them is for BG mode. Having them in BG mode spreads any damage I take across more bots which decreases the chance of actually losing a bot.

For Traps you definitely want to take Caltrops, Acid Mortar, Force Field Generator, Poison Gas Trap, Seeker Drones and Triage Beacon. I'd wait until the late 20s or 30s to take Triage Beacon but the others you want to take as soon as they become available.

Web Grenade is a nice power to have for AV fights in TFs but it isn't essential.

Trip Mine is a personal preference thing, you can reasonably reliably run into the middle of a group and drop one while your FFG and PGT keep you safe. I personally don't like doing this but my Trapper is Traps/AR so I get a lot more AoE damage from my secondary. With Dual Pistols however Trip Mine does offer superior DPA compared to your secondary AoEs so you should consider it.

Time Bomb is a gimmick power, take it if you really want but it's the first thing I'd drop in a tight build.


For Dual Pistols I'm less certain, here's my thoughts on the matter:
Pistols: Required so you might as well plan on using it
Dual Wield: Necessary if you want a solid attack chain but if you're planning to rely on toe bombing you can skip this, it will make you slower against bosses/AVs though.
Empty Clips: This is a pretty poor AoE, I'd say skip it if you're planning to go toe bombing else take it but YMMV
Swap Ammo: Take it, and learn the different debuffs
Bullet Rain: Not a great AoE but better than Empty Clips so I'd take it
Suppressive Fire: A single Target Mez, personally I don't find that Traps needs a blast set mez but it's a decent power
Executioner's Shot: See Dual Wield
Piercing Rounds: Definitely take it and set up some binds or macros to allow you to switch to lethal ammo, fire PR and switch back to your old ammo easily
Hail of Bullets: This does the same damage as Trip Mine so in some ways it's tempting to say skip it and rely on toe bombing but I'd probably take it since it has a larger radius than trip mines and isn't interruptable.

Nothing much to say on pool powers. Leadership is always nice to take and fighting will make it much easier to hit the softcap if you go that route. Hasten is definitely useful for Traps but is not required.

For Ancillary pools I took Mu Mastery since I just wanted the shield but YMMV there. If you want more damage I recommend Dark Mastery for a Trapper, you jump into a group lay a PGT and then use Soul Drain to buff your damage, not to shabby. Mace Mastery has a defense shield which makes it easier to hit the softcap without Fighting although if you take fighting I'd advise taking a resistance shield.

For IOs you want to build for recharge and defense. Traps needs all the recharge it can get and with the Defense from FFG (and fighting or mace mastery if you took them) it's not to hard to softcap it as well.

Wrong forum for this, it shoudl really be in Player Questions .

In any case if you want to change your costume you should visit the Tailor. You can find them in Steel Canyon (Hero), Cap au Diable (Villain) or Imperial City (Preatorian). At levels 20, 30 and 40 the Hero and Villain ones will offer you a misison that unlocks an additional costume slot.

I LOVE Assault Rifle. Something about the huge AoE damage combined with minimal visual effects really appeals to me. I only have 2 AR characters but that's because I force myself not to make tons more because I want to give myself some variety.

I did the same thing on my Bots/Traps MM. I underslotted a few powers in terms of recharge (two level 50 IOs instead trying for 95%) with the intent of using the Spiritual Boost to make up the difference.

Then I realized that Musculature would probably be a better option since it's the only practical way to increase pet damage post level 50. Oh well.

In general though I'll note that the mechanics of the Alpha slot does help SO'd/Frankenslotted builds compared to heavily IO'd builds. To fully optimize for an Alpha build you need to adjust certain enhancement types carefully which is often impractical if you're slotting set IOs.

I'll give a little more detail, assuming you have never done a Hamidon Raid.

There are three types of mitocondria:
Mitochondria Antibodies (Yellows)
Mitochondria Electrolytes (Blues)
Mending Mitochondria (Greens)

There are 6 of each type and you pretty much need to kill all 18 of them.

Yellows are virtually impossible to hit with any power that does has a "Ranged" or "AoE" positional attack tag. This primarily means melee attacks since almost all melee attacks just have a Melee tag (there are a few exceptions such as Foot Stomp that have AoE instead and will not work) along with a handful of special case powers like Blind which lack a positional tag at all.. Yellows will also stun nearby characters so ideally you want stun protection on people attacking them.

Blues are virtually impossible to hit with any power that does has a "Melee" or "AoE" positional attack tag. This primarily means single target ranged attacks since these just have a ranged tag (ranged AoEs will not work since they have an AoE tag) along with a handful of special case powers like Blind which lack a positional tag at all. Blues cause a Terrorized mez as part of their attack so protection from that is useful if possible.

Greens have very high resistance to all damage and very high regen but this can be suppressed by holding them. You need to apply a total magnitude 10 hold to the Green to suppress it's defenses. In addition to attacking you the Greens will heal other mitocondria or Hamidon itself.

The important thing when clearing the mitos is to focus fire and work together. Depending on team composition you'll generally end up splitting into two groups to take out the Yellows and Blues since most characters are strong against one and weak against the other. Often teams prefer to leave the Greens for last since they aren't as damaging as the other types and the need to apply holds means they often take longer to spike. Obviously though you should vary this up based on team composition. A Controller/Dominator heavy team might well find it easier to kill the greens first, especially if they lack the spike damage to kill the Blues/Yellows through the Green's healing.

Once you've killed the mitos Hamidon is basically a big pile of hit-points.

One final note is Essence of the Earth Inspirations. You can get these from killing Devouring Earth Monsters (found in PI, The Hive, The Abyss and Monster Island). When used it provides partial protection from Hamidon's attacks for 1 minute. You can do the LGTF Hamidon without them (although you will almost certainly suffer some deaths doing so). If you're worried or you're on a team that's struggling you can normally get some cheaply at the AH and that can make a difference.

In terms of team composition the important thing is making you can can apply a mag 10 hold for a least a few seconds. Obviously Controllers and Dominators are best for this so having one or two along pretty much guarantees this. Most other ATs can get access to hold powers in their Epic pool but, a lot of players don't slot them up very well so don't rely on them being able to stack their own hold. As you probably picked up it's useful to have a mix of ranged and melee attacks as well but overall it's less important, if you can take out the Greens it's possible to take out the Yellows and Blues with temp and vet powers if you have to.

I like the idea of a Defender TF channel as well, any suggestions for names? I kinda like the idea of calling it "Fruitsalad" in honor of The Defender's Manifesto but that is somewhat wierd to anyone who isn't familiar with it.

Try asking in the Defender forum. I don't have one avaialble but I can probably offer advice and tweaking help.