AnElfCalledMack

Blinding Feint over Build Up/Focus Chi. The ability to make your damage boost permanent, and even stack it, is much better against hard targets, whereas Build Up is better for quickly dropping annoying targets like Sappers, or for massive AoEs. Also, DB does have the highest-DPS chain of any scrapper primary. Some people like that.

Ideally, you'd have sustainable endurance consumption, and could keep swinging with whatever. No attack needs to hit to generate fury, and you don't lower your chace to hit - you just have floored damage. But using KO Blow mid-crash would probably be a waste, so you might wat to try and avoid that.

You also get a second ST hold in Seismic Smash, and Power Boost to give your "every spawn" control enough duration to get the whole thing locked down or dropped. In fact, at high recharge (well above Perma-Dom), Fire/Earth or Mind/Earth can stack over 54 magnitudes of hold on a single target - enough to control an AV through the Purple Triangles of Doom.

It's not just lazy: 1111 influence will mean that the seller recieves 1000 inf after transaction fees. So 1111 is the "no loss" pricing for yellow salvage. Similarly, 1,111,111 is "I want to actually get one mill out of this". 11 is a lazy "not 1 or 10", though

Also works for Fiery Aura tankers. The combination of a fast-cycling heal, a solid self-rez, and no native knockback protection makes it a fairly appropriate song.

Brutes: "Don't Stop Me Now", Queen.

Best album for playing Warden arcs to: "The Resistance", Muse. Obvious, I know, but still great.

Oh, gods. I remember that mission with the continual Blast Master ambushes. You think that was hard on a Blaster? Try a Stalker. Those stupid fire patches...

Anyway, yes, from what I've seen, quite a lot of Praetorian content would be very easy from the air, but there would be quite a few really brutal EBs along the way. I'm thinking the Aspect of Praetor Tilman, Vanessa DeVore, Seer 0001...

Hmm... sensing a pattern. Avoid powerful psychics if you can.

Kat/SR is capped to melee at level 8, but that does mean you have to remember to hit your parries when they come up. It's also not the sturdiest thing to level - I'd say Shields or WP makes for a more "steamroller" levelling experience. Probably WP, jsut so you don't need to remember your mez protection.

Confirming that the Tanker version is functioning properly. I used it for special effects at the dance party last Friday.

Fire/Earth here, and between Char, Ring of Fire and Stone Spears, I have plenty of things to do at range - I don't even have vet powers. Unlike scrappers or blappers, doms get to duke it out with one guy because the others are all held, which is really nice. Sure, chaining them might not be the smartest idea, but with Ring of Fire slotted for damage, keeping it up is pretty solid DPA, and Stone Spears is a great option for killing runners, too. Who wouldn't want Air Superiority with an 80ft range?

Psi has a lot better AoE than Energy, and that's pretty much a good thing. You don't get quite as much "sleep the spawn, then drop them one at a time", but on the upside, your team won't hate you for 1) using sleeps, which they then break, and 2) knocking back enemies. And, of course, Drain Psyche is delicious.

Pseudopets redirect all their aggro to their creator. Don't believe me? Drop Caltrops under a mob. They will shoot you.

So, not only do vets get all the good costume parts, City Traveller, Sands of Mu, Staff/Blackwand, and free respecs, but extra slots, too? Not everyone here is a veteran, you know. I'm getting my trenchcoats in a week, and you shouldn't have to have played since launch to get the best performance out of your AT and sets.

In short, vet rewards are about making life easier for veterans (filling out the attack chain early, getting travel powers ahead of time, and being able to make a "post-SOs" respec without going through a trial), not about improving high-end performance. Extra slots would have enormous impacts on optimised builds, and would be a terrible vet reward.

I love doms, and I have never gotten one to anything like perma. Domination is still awesome - a free blue bar every couple of minutes is a huge help for an aggressive playstyle, and a secondary like Energy or Earth can let you juggle the mobs you can't control. And even out of Domination, you're a control set with good damage. A Held Sapper isn't draining any of your endurance, and he won't last long with the AoEs most assault sets can fling around. I'd rather be a Dominatior than nearly any other AT facing heavy mezzing and end drains, even with Domination cooling down.

Note: Melee classes with ELA are a very, very close second. Also, It's Mastercard.

Which is why discussions of "perma" anything typically allow at least a full second of overlap, in case you're still coming out of an animation when it recharges. And it's not really the Arcanatime lag that matters here - you just need to be careful not to start a 3-second animation just before Domination recharges, but that's simple. You just break your attack chain for 1-2 seconds.

I've never minded seeing other tanks on the team, myself. It just means that if I do something really stupid, there's someone to back me up.

Then again, I do have a hyperagressive Fire/Fire tanker...

Anyway, Radiation Emission's always tasty in all its forms, as are Kineticists, but I'm more interested in the team being competent and meshing well than any specific powerset.

You know, three Scrapper sets have an AoE attack at level 2...

Three armor sets, that is.

Yes, I'm talking about the damage aura. Everyone claims it's an end-hog, but when you look at the numbers, it's actually one of the best DPE and DPA attacks you can find. Sure, leaving it up and hitting attacks like crazy will crash your endurance, but that's not the aura's fault. Just remember that when something's on that last sliver of health, the aura will kill it in a few seconds. No need to spend 6-8 end on an attack.

May contain traces of spoilers.

My first Praetorian to get to Primal Earth went Crusader Nova -> Crusader Imperial -> Responsibility Imperial -> Responsibility Neut -> Warden Neut. She was a radical environmentalist who wanted to force Cole and the Praetorians to get back in touch with nature, instead of coating everything in steel and gold. So she starts off as a Crusader, trying to break down the walls and make some space for nature, but the Neutron Bomb had too much collateral damage for her - think of all the plants and animals it'd kill.
Anyway, she betrayed the Resistance and started the Responsibility arc to try and stop the Crusaders pulling any other loony tricks like that. Of course, she'd tend to warn Calvin Scott about the craziness the Crusaders were up to, as well. In the end, when Kang found his tape, she was in complete agreement - the people of Praetoria had to see it. So, with Cole pissed at her, and still regarding the Crusaders as too unstable to be trusted, she took up the Warden path, trying to stop the outbreak of interdimensional war that her "loyalist" days had uncovered. And really, what's a better finale for a defender of Gaia than restoring the water to its natural state?

So, yes. Multiple paths can make for a good story that isn't "multiple personalities".

Bad things happen. Personally, if I get to level 20 without being defeated, I'd think my difficulty was too low. The problems are when you run into something you can't see any way out of - the Noble Savage fight, for example, is a straight-up DPS check, since he has rock-solid status protection, hits like a truck, and doesn't have any tricky mechanics. If you can't beat him with a tray full of purples, then you just can't beat him. Accidentally aggroing a second spawn, or leaving the Painted One alive long enough to get Marked for Death, is just a mistake. It might result in defeat, but you can avoid it next time.

It's also a problem for Grav/Energy, and they don't even have good AoE control. Do I keep Lifting the boss, or put down the first hold and pray? Personally, I always opted for Holding the minions/LTs and trying to juggle the boss. Then again, I'm weird - I always liked Dimension Shift, because if you didn't slot it for accuracy, it'd split the spawn in two, and give you plenty of time to kill the first half.