Yoru-Hime

No thanks, and I'm concerned to see the content quality of boosters dropping far faster than their prices.

Not reading all the replies, so forgive me if I'm repeating common themes.

Dual Pistols. All of it. Not that the animations are bad, but they're so narrow thematically.

Hasten. At least a no FX version. I'm tired of EVERY character having glowing hands.

Everything Kheldian. Okay, really, the problems there go so far beyond animations that it's probably outside the scope of the question, though having to look exactly like every other Nova and Dwarf out there doesn't help.

Integration. I have lots of character concepts that can use Regen. Zero of them beat their chest like Tarzan.

Medicine pool.

Servers are down here too.

California, California, Washington, Massachusetts. Let's try the middle 90% of the country for a change. Personally, I'd like it to be somewhere in the Midwest. Perhaps GenCon in Indianapolis or something in Chicago? I could also see something in Dallas or Denver as a chance for some new people to have a shot at attending.

I suppose it depends on which limits you want to push on your character. How do you want to excel?

Maximum safety for you and your team - I built for this. My Dark/Dark/Psy is a master of debuffing and crowd control. Cone Fear, AoE sleep, multiple holds and enough tohit debuff make AVs cry, and that's before the pet gets involved. Not the fastest damage dealer, but those cone DoTs do add up. If I'm playing her right, she's about as tough as tank to bring down (though with a lot less margin of error if I screw up, obviously). Possibly tougher than some tanks against psy foes.

Big game hunter - Sonic is the weapon of choice here, I'd think. Dark gives you the -regen you need and a little -res. The extra -Res in sonic will help to wear down GMs and AVs faster. Perhaps a Power Epic for Power Build Up and Conserve Power for the long fights?

Mass destruction - Ice or Psy, prob, depending on personal preference. Ice's AoEs are begging to be corrected one of these days, but I admit that I've enjoyed them on my Rad/Ice while they've lasted. Power or Dark Epic here, depending on if going into thick melee to really leverage the Dark buffs makes you squeamish.

Not too sure - Rad. I've never played it. Sorry.

Not recommended - Energy or AR. Too much knockback that you just don't want or need.
Elec. Endurance drain is the worst secondary effect in the game in my opinion. You either devote your whole character to it or it's worthless. Elec has the extra hold, but if you want that, go Ice or Psy Epic instead.
Archery. It's not bad, but doesn't really stand out either. Besides, you said you don't want redraw.
Elec Epic - You've got plenty of immobilize available and I don't like Total Focus or Thunder Strike on a Defender. Too little return for too much animation time. Unless you're just really craving Energy Resistance, you'll probably do better elsewhere.

Excellent. I'm used to putting them in Shadowfall, which I never turn off.

^ Exactly. If you're playing 2 Traps Defs together (assuming identical builds), I'd say you have too much Defense in the build. Once you softcap, you're softcapped, adding more doesn't do much good (though having a little extra to deal with defense debuffs isn't a bad idea). I'm doing something similar with a Traps/DP and a Traps/AR, we're going with FFG, Maneuvers, both slotted up well and left it at that. Set bonuses are focused on Recharge, Recovery and Damage.

Even softcapped, you're going to get hit about 5% of the time, so some resistance will go a long way toward giving you some breathing room to hit an inspiration if that Nemesis spawn hits Vengeance or the random number generator suddenly decides it hates you right when you've gotten the attention of that boss.

Question: Does putting Karma KB into FFG give full protection since you're only firing it every 4 min? I thought it was only 2 min from when the power fired last. I was planning to drop it in Maneuvers, just to be sure.

In response to both questions, I'd say it's a matter of taste. I tend to overdo it on accuracy, so I'd probably go Tactics, where as you've got a more PBAoE build going, so the extra security of Maneuvers may work better for you. Not too sure how good Piercing Rounds is, so it may depend on whether you find yourself wanting a heavy hitting attack or a bit more control when the time comes.

You're only getting 1 MPH extra in flight speed for those last two Fly IOs in Hover. I doubt you'll notice the difference if they got moved somewhere more useful. If you really want to max out your flight speed, you'll get very nearly as much benefit from a second Fly IO in Swift and you'll still have an extra slot to play with.

I agree with Biospark all the way on ditching Soul Transfer for Soul Drain. Open up with Fearsome Stare, Darkest Night and/or Fluffy to soften the spawn, dart into the middle, hit Soul Drain, then let loose with Hail of Bullets. And you'll have Dark Consumption in your back pocket if the crash starts catching up with you. Besides, you're a dark defender, any power that starts with you being dead is one you're not going to get to use very often.

A few comments, but take them with a grain of salt, I've played a D3 out, but not a Dark/DP, so they may not be worth much:

You've got a lot of attacks. Nothing wrong with that, but once you have a chain going, odds are you won't bother with whichever one doesn't fit. Be alert to it and don't be afraid to respec and drop one if you're just not using it. There are a lot of good powers you could pick up in place of one.

Too many slots in Tar Patch. It needs no accuracy, it does no damage and really needs little in the way of slows. I went with 2 recharges at 50 and left it at that.

You've also got a LOT of slots in Power Buildup. True, there's the nice +2.5 def bonus for 6 slotting, but still, that's a lot of slots to invest to get there. You'd probably be just as happy with the power itself with 2 recharges if you wanted to move those elsewhere.

I'd try to sneak some more End Reduction in where you can. It might let you drop Conserve Power in favor of something like Assault that will make you a more efficient killer. While you're at it, you've got 3 LotG Global Recharges and 2 Zephyr -KBs. If you're spending that much, I'd go ahead and spring for the Miracle +Recovery for your Health. You'll get a lot more mileage out of it than you would the 2nd KB protection.

As has been mentioned, you've gone over the top on 6.25% recharge. Perhaps go with Devastation in Pistols?

I usually like high def builds, but if your primary is -tohit, do you really need that much ranged def? It never hurts, mind you, but once you've got them floored, it doesn't help either.

You've got Suppressive Fire slotted for Hold. Might it be a little tempting to go for Petrifying Gaze for that near-instant boss stopping combo solo? PG is a lousy Hold alone, but stacked with another, it becomes suddenly a lot more interesting.

I'll go ahead and chime in with dislike of Force of Nature, or anything that has a built in crash on a toggle-centric defender. If the fight is tough enough to need it, there's a decent chance you're still going to be slugging it out when the crash catches up with you.

A good build and I'm sure you'd be able to use it to great effect, just throwing a few things out there for you to think about.

EDIT: The above was posted before the 2nd build, so it may no longer apply.

I'm a bit insomniac, so I'm probably missing some good ones, but here's my fab 5:

Fearsome Stare - If you don't know, you've never tried it.

Force Field Generator - So much def and it's not even a toggle. Even in the unlikely situation where you do get mezzed, it keeps right on doing its thing

Accelerate Metabolism - Most of the fun of SB, none of the complaints about the forced Super Speed.

Stamina - Yeah, yeah, boring, I know, but we all still take it on just about every character. We even flush 2 power picks to get it.

Fulcrum Shift - Everyone knows when the Kin shows up at the zombie raid. Suddenly everything starts dying in droves.

I dunno, I can see a -tohit for HoB easily enough, but it also seems a little awkward that we do all that twisting and spinning and it doesn't make us any harder to hit than someone just standing there dishing out the damage. Truth be told, if they aren't interested in making DP damage respectable, giving a very small, short term +def with each attack to compensate for the long animation times spent whirling like a lunatic might be appropriate.

Either way, either the enemies need to get more dead or the players need to get less dead when it comes to Hail of Bullets.

My thoughts:

As a Dark Defender, you're never going to churn out massive damage. As a dark, what you're going to do is steadily beat down your enemies with a level of safety that will make tanks jealous. Not that it's agonizingly slow in my opinion, but don't expect to keep up with the scrappers, either.

Keep in mind, this is all from the perspective of a Dark/Dark. I'm still learning the ins and outs of Dual Pistols.

Hold Protection - Yours is called -tohit. You hit Fearsome Stare, they're too busy cowering to get off many attacks, and when they do, they miss anyway. Slip in a KB protection IO or two, carry a few break frees in case they get lucky, but otherwise, don't get too bent out of shape worrying about mez.

Hasten - It's not mandatory, but it helps out quite a bit. I run a high recharge build, personally. I've never really seen the need for lots of defense on a Dark Defender.

Tar Patch - It is certainly a power you want to take and slot for recharge. The -Res does equate to a nice little +Damage. When you're fighting big foes, remember that Howling Twilight and Twilight Grasp also pack -Regen debuffs.

Fighting pool - I wouldn't trade a cone, even a lackluster one, for a melee attack, certainly not one of those listed. I'd also avoid the Fighting Pool altogether unless you're really going for extreme defense. Shadowfall will take that +3 def IO, if you want to use it, along with two flavors of KB IO.

Temp Attacks - If you need more than one or two temp attacks after 30 or so, you need to look at taking more real attacks. You don't have a serious -defense power, so that base accuracy is going to get VERY tiresome. Truthfully, I never use them at all.

Assault - Assault isn't a huge boost, but it's noticeable and it spreads to your team as well, when you have one. Even as a soloist, I'd invest in the Leadership pool long before I started messing around in the Fighting pool on a Defender.

Darkest Night - Unless you're soloing at a very high difficulty level, eventually you probably won't be using this every fight. This is purely a protective power, so if you're not in danger without, this is wasted Endurance. I save it for bad spawn placement and nasty bosses when I'm alone. For anything else, Fearsome Stare and a little defense from IOs generally protects me just fine.

Traps/Sonic is my star character for this double xp weekend. She started at 19 and may hit 35 before the end of it all.

Caltrops vs Web Grenade - There's no clear winner here. Some swear by Caltrops, some hate them like poison. I started with Web Grenade, but as I go up in level and get more and more powers to play with I find that I usually have something a lot better to do with that 1.37 sec than throw a single target immobilize. I may respec into Caltrops just to try them at some point.

Triage Beacon - 300% Regen is noticeable, in my opinion, if you're looking for it, but it's no Instant Healing either. You can certainly faceplant in it's range. I plan to take it late in my build, something to throw down before an AV fight but really, if things get tight, it'll be the first to go.

Seeker Drones - The -Acc debuff stacks with your Force Field Generator for some serious protection, plus they'll eat your alpha for you. I wouldn't call this one skippable.

Siren's Song/Time Bomb/Dreadful Wail - It does sound like a fun way to see how much damage you can cut loose with in a small time frame, but really, once the ooh factor wears off, you're not going to want to take the time to set it up.

The new install defaults you into PvP mode. Not a bug but wanted to make note of it in case anyone else couldn't figure out where those random resistance values were coming from.

Thanks for the quick update. This program makes the game much more fun.

Dual Pistols feels very FotM. Looks awesome if you're into gun-fu, but looks ridiculous if you're not. Add that to the fact that it's functionally below average and I'm predicting some revisions coming sooner or later.

You're definitely onto something with the lack of Aim.

The stated thought is that DP pays for the flexibility with weaker secondary effects.

DP really pays for it with:

1) Weak secondary effects
2) Needing to take a power to get them. (Do you need to take a DoT power for Fire Blasters?)
3) Losing access to the power that could have been in the slot used up by Swap Ammo, presumably Aim

The nuke is also pretty badly designed. PBAoE DoT with a random factor. Kinda seems to be designed to get us killed.

Errr, followed it all weekend. A few dozen generic con pictures, a few shouts out looking for people at the Con willing to do Stupid Human Tricks for swag, two generic shots of the Power Customization UI... and... errr....

I hate to come off so negative, I really don't mind a little fun with tweeting, but surely SOMETHING said at the panel was actually interesting and worth passing on to the player base? (Something said about revamping the lowbie experience, maybe?) When I wanted to get "up-to-date" with what the devs actually said in their panel, I ended up going right back to player threads on the forum.

Nothing against the lovely ladies you had out cosplaying Ms Liberty and Desdemona, but if you're going to ask us to follow your Twitter account, is it too much to ask for a little signal in with all that static?

I agree with the sentiment expressed by lots of others. We don't have any BAD sets, just some that noticeably lag behind their counterparts in terms of performance. Yes, a good player can still make these sets shine, but someone going from say, Fire or Illusion Control to Grav Control could reasonably be expected to say, "Hey, this set isn't as good." even if they were equally competent with both sets.

In a lot of cases, these powersets are just very vanilla. They lack the extra oomph or neat secondary effects that make their counterparts stand out.

My not-so-fab five:

Electric Blast (blasters and defenders) - Endurance Drain just isn't that good a secondary effect. If you build your whole character around it, you can sometimes see some practical effect from it, unless you're a blaster. The nice hold balances this out somewhat, but the pitiful AoE really drags this one down.

Electric Armor - ElA has lots of neat utility powers, but it's not all that good at actually improving survival, which is what the set is there for.

Gravity Control - A controller set doing a blaster imitation... badly. Pretty good damage for a controller but your main AoE control is the quirky Wormhole. Even paired with kin, those animation times make you feel slow. Doesn't have any secondary effects like -def or -recharge either.

Mercenaries - The vanilla Mastermind set. Functional, but really has nothing to recommend it.

Devices - Probably one of the oddest sets in the game, it really makes no effort at being anything like its counterparts. I rather like the concept for the originality, but in terms of performance, I've always found myself wishing I'd taken something else. Trip mines and time bomb can do good damage in a burst, but are really team unfriendly, and even solo, you'll generally do more damage over time doing things the old fashioned way. A lot of neat tricks in the set, outside of the mine and bomb, but the best of them are easily replaced by pools or IOs. Gun Drone is one good fix away from awesome (seriously 90 sec duration?), but still, no way to boost your damage at all drags this one into the bottom 5.

Claws/Regen scrapper. Think I died twice solo in 50 levels. Teams could get me killed now and then if they were trying hard enough.

For your circumstance I'd suggest Dark/Dark. The immobilize, fear and tar patch should do nicely to keep your foes bunched up for your partner's AoEs. Stack a little def from sets with all the -tohit and you should be very well protected from what attacks do get through, with a heal and eventually a pet in your back pocket if you need them.

Trick Arrow would also work pretty well, Fire + Oil Slick is a very fun thing, but you're also going to be a bit more vulnerable, in my opinion.

Hall of Fame and the Recognized series of badges are fundamentally flawed and damaging to the system as a whole. I have already gotten two messages to the effect of "I gave you 5 stars, please do the same for me on Arc #XXXX." I have also sorted by Rating looking for a good arc and ended up playing completely incomprehensible stories that were toward the top of the 5 star ranking and I highly suspect that star farming was at fault.

We already have an overwhelming number of arcs available, and sorting the good from the bad is hard enough. These badges encourage people to try to scam the system and artificially boost bad arcs to the top. While anonymous peer review is a lousy way to determine the good from the bad, I know there's not really another way to rate arcs, but these badges are making an already weak system outright useless.

I'd also like to add my thumbs-down about Dev's Choice. If this is to stay in the game, there should be a minimum number per month. Otherwise, I fully expect that this badge will be functionally retired by the time I15 is in open beta.

MArc Title: Deus Ex Machina
MArc ID#: 36122
MArc Author: @Yoru-hime
MArc Level Setting: 5+ (Aimed at higher level characters, though)
# of Missions: 5
Length: 60-90 min
Side: Hero
Soloable: Yes
Difficulty: Medium
Synopsis: Trouble is brewing deep in the bowels of the Arc Server. Join an intrepid Architect Entertainment staffer to root out the cause of the problems before they spill out into the streets of Paragon City!

1 Powerset Proliferation - I hope to see more of this Soon, I have a great character idea waiting for an Electric Melee Scrapper.

2 The Midnighter's Club - There's so much flavor here to draw one in.

3 Day Jobs - With a caveat. Right now I really like the idea, but the implementation is pretty feeble. (End of mission bonuses for the first 4.2 minutes! Yippie!) With a bit of dev love, this could go from neat idea to exceptional addition.

Objective: Winter Lords are being farmed at a prodigious rate for merits. I can't imagine trying to be a lowbie in Galaxy on at a peak time. Huge spawns with level 8 bosses everywhere being ignored by the 50s that spawn. And good luck ever touching a present yourself. I don't think it's a problem with the WLs so much as a flaw with the merit system in general.

Subjective: I HATE the ski slopes. I hate playing that kind of game, hate the way that my connection just kills any chance I'll ever have at even finishing a run before the timer takes pity on me and desperately hate the fact that my badge character now has 6 badges that there is no chance she'll ever earn, no matter how much time I waste on that stupid mountain. I tried the new one twice, felt that same urge to break out in audible expletives rising in me that Ski Slope 1 inspired, and left Pocket D altogether. No reason to make my significant other suffer through another few weeks of that this holiday season. Maybe we could add these to the candy keeper along with the Snaptooth badges for those who don't have great connections and/or infinite patience for twitch gaming?

I was really hoping to see new holiday missions from Father Time, a variety of ways to earn all those Candy Canes we need for Halos and Recipes except farming BNY and trolling for presents for hours on end. Instead, it's another <censored> ski slope. Gotta admit, I know you were trying to get I13 ready to go, but the Winter Event was a big let down for me this year.

The good: Lots of TFs being run that weren't run all that often before. Of course, it's still trending toward the best Merit/Hr ones, but that was expected.

Monsters are actually being hunted down, not just ignored forever.

The bad: Unable to share Merit credit for running a story arc, even if your sidekick did the whole thing with you. Can't even give him half the Merits yourself afterward. I do a lot of solo story arcs anymore.

Merit Vendor has no way to tell you which recipes are in a Level XX Task Force Random Roll. What does that even mean going forward? No TF has ever or will ever drop an Obliteration recipe, after all, so how do I know which pool to take a chance in if I want to try to pick one up for cheap?

I have to agree with the general complaint:

Logging in to a four minute thirty second bonus for every mission I complete is silly and bordering on obnoxious. I don't want to have to play character roulette every day just to get a bonus long enough to actually finish a mission with.

How about instead of a bonus of trivial length every time, we get a discrete X minute bonus (or X charge bonus) for every X hours logged out. When you log in, if you've accrued enough time, bingo, you get your bonus (possibly times two or three up to a cap). If not, it carries forward.