Wonderslug

Mental Blast is fine. The biggest problem it had was lowish damage for a longish animation. After boosting the damage 64% that's no longer really an issue.

As a note, any guide written before I15 (June '09) is going to be completely worthless for dominator secondaries because of sweeping changes to every set except Electric Assault.

Your current build is fine. Of remaining powers, I'd say the must-haves are Terrify (which will be your every-spawn mass soft control but should probably be slotted as an attack), Mass Confusion, Drain Psyche, and Psychic Shockwave. Everything else is at least okay.

I never skip AoE holds, but some people do. I personally wouldn't bother with Subdue--too late and too similar to Mental Blast--but if you plan to seriously pursue permadom, then you should have enough recharge to use it and Mental Blast and drop Psionic Dart off your tray. Ordinarily this would be an excellent way to murder your endurance, but you will also have enough recharge to keep Drain Psyche up most of the time.

Telekinesis is a very powerful but very expensive, very fiddly tool with a ridiculous learning curve. Until you have mastered it, it is mostly an excellent way to piss off teammates and/or cause wipes. In six years I have seen it used well...I think three times. Somewhere there is a well-written guide on the mechanics and tactics of Telekinesis, but personally it is not worth the trouble.

Lightning Rod (and Shield Charge) are pets, but there's no hit check required to summon them. They're location powers; they get summoned even if there are no targets at all in range.

Chain Induction used to work with granted powers, which is why it "stole" XP, could harm players when used on confused foes, and had all damage after the initial hit determined by the target's rank rather than your enhancements, fury, or other damage buffs. The fix for all those issues was reworking it to use pets.

It's a mistake, and a particularly long-standing one, too.

I have a dim suspicion that Terrify might once have had a to-hit debuff, in the long-ago times when it was a DoT and fear made things run away in a blind panic instead of anything remotely useful. But I wouldn't trust that memory, since my only mind control characters postdate the fear change.

Relative elevation is a good general guideline simply because that's how things tend to work out while traveling, but I think what's actually checked is the distance between your peak elevation and your landing point. Simply landing lower than you started won't necessarily cause you to take damage: if you step off the roof of a two-story building with SJ on, for example, you won't take damage.

I suspect the game simply adds your maximum jump height to the normal safe falling distance; whether you start lower or higher than you land isn't actually relevant.

Fiery Embrace hasn't been a damage buff of any sort since I18. Instead, it adds a fully enhanceable fire damage component to all of your attacks for 20 seconds. The added damage is usually about 45% of the base damage. This is a much better deal for everyone, fire/fire included.

Sadness.

You have learned so quickly.

First, Alpha boosts will not be visible in the combat window because they are not global bonuses. They function as though they were slotted in each power you have individually. ED checks only slotted values, not global buff values.

Open your enhancement window, mouse over a power, and note the slotted recharge enhancement value. Close the window, unequip your Alpha, and then check the same power again. The slotted recharge value should be smaller.

Okay, so sou've got ~94% accuracy total.

The purple patch means your base to-hit against a +2 target is 56%. Normally, your final to-hit is 56 * 1.94 = 108.64%, capped at 95%.

The drones' 35% defense drops base to-hit from 56% to 21%. Your accuracy will raise that to 21 * 1.94 = 40.74%, which sounds like what you're seeing.

I for one welcome our new marching band overlords.

(Technically all this demonstrates is that trombonists are insane, but any musician knows that already.)

You're not imagining it. It went live in April of last year: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_No...4-08#Defenders

It's not impossible the change could have accidentally reverted due to sloppy code merges, though.

Hmm. Sifting through my bookmarks, listing only stuff no one's mentioned yet:

Gunnerkrigg Court (http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/) - Antimony Carver sees dead people, but she's still not that weird compared to the rest of her boarding school. Sizeable archive. Continuous story, start from the beginning with the knowledge that Antimony's head shape rapidly becomes less peculiarly ovoid.

Bad Machinery and its predecessor, Scary Go Round (http://www.scarygoround.com/) - Slices of life in smallish-town England, if it involved zombies, mad science, time travel, devil bears, inept mayors, jam, magic pencils, and cursed sports magnates. Gargantuan archive. Discrete but related stories, starting from the beginning helpful but not necessary. No knowledge of SGR technically needed for Bad Machinery.

Hark, a Vagrant (http://harkavagrant.com/) - Mostly warped looks at historical figures and literature. Decent archive. No continuing story.

Digger (http://www.diggercomic.com/) - A story about a wombat, a talking statue, a crazy girl, a hyena whose name has been eaten, and a shadow that may or may not be a demon. Sizeable archive. Continuous story, start from the beginning.

Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name (http://hanna.aftertorque.com/) - In addition to having a girl's name, Hanna Falk Cross is of dubious value as a paranormal investigator. Small archive. Continuous story, start from the beginning.

Fey Winds (http://kitsune.rydia.net/index.html) - Would be a pompous high fantasy potboiler epic if not for a complete inability to take itself seriously. Decent archive. Continuous story, start from the beginning.

Calystix is in the room with the ginormous Leviathan teeth, right? One tooth should be shimmering, as I recall. You need to click on that.

As it happens, I have a MA/Fire scrapper on live who was hovering in the low 20s for a long while. I made him knowing full well that was a fairly dodgy combo, as scrappers go. Then I got into beta.

Lately I've been pushing him a bit. There may have been some maniacal cackling involved.