Alef_infinity

I play a Mind/Emp--she's my only 50 so far. She's really good especially in small teams like a duo, so usually I'd back up that combo for a duo. But I agree that it's probably not the best combo for playing with a MM--in my mind the duo partner that'd gain the most from Emp would be a squishy (or a scrapper/brute/stalker that isn't built to be indestructible).

MMs don't gain nearly as much from you buffing them, since they tend to be tough already (and one with Dark Miasma can heal themselves pretty well as well as debuffing tohit), and they have very little use personally for +damage. So Fortitude only benefits them so much, and it's a huge pain to buff others' pets. I never bother even if the pet would benefit more than a given teammate--I can't tell its status at all and targetting it's more annoying unless you create a special targetting bind. Hmm, I might try making that bind.

Depending on the secondary, they could benefit from +recharge and +recovery, but you'll get that on them far more reliably with a Kin--unless you spend a fair deal on +recharge set bonuses. I did and I don't regret it (nearly perma Adrenaline Boost is tasty and it's nice having other stuff come up a lot more), but not everyone'll want to. And you probably aren't looking for a major investment. Oh, and as an incidental note pets don't benefit from +recharge at all--they're immune to recharge modifications.

Mind/Kin should be good for the reasons already stated by others. It goes really well with anyone with a lot of damaging pets, really (except Illusion).

About the mouse bug: those of us with a Support ticket out for this issue just got an email telling us a change would be published to the test server sometime today and asking us to try it out to see if the problem was fixed for us. So it's not like they've been doing nothing on this problem. And as BAB pointed out, they have different people working on different things.

I can understand the impatience--this bug is extremely annoying. But from what I've heard, it's been a difficult bug to fix.

There're only so many healing powers you can take, and your AoE heal's half as strong as your single-target heal and recharges more slowly. That said, Empathy's a pretty good choice for your concept considering it's completely focused on buffs and heals.

Technically, Adrenaline Boost and Regeneration Aura are long-duration heal-over-time spells, they just tend to get categorized by players as buffs rather than heals. It's hard to make either effects permanent, though I managed to get enough recharge to make Adrenaline Boost permanent. That cost me at least a couple hundred million influence, and I had the advantage of being able to slot two cheap purple sets (the sleep and confuse sets).

Hell, I picked Empathy for concept reasons too--my character seemed more the sort to buff than debuff (she's odd though and is likely to inflict weird if usually not negative effects on others).

Not sure why Gravity for the concept though I can see Singularity as a holy spirit?

Even if you can't afford IO sets at this point, just keep in mind that you want recharge for the powers with long recharge. So, the equal of three recharge SOs in those powers (anything more won't do nearly as much). For example, Fortitude (your blessing to make them harder to hit and stronger) gets three recharge, three defense. Recovery Aura gets three recharge. Regeneration Aura gets three recharge, three heal. Hasten gets three recharge. Adrenaline Boost gets three recharge and three heal.

I think those're all of the particularly long recharge powers I can think of. You don't usually need more than one slot in Resurrect (one recharge is fine).

Clear Mind (which in fact does cure blindness among other fun effects it prevents from affecting people) would probably be fine with nothing in its own slot, but one recharge works here. Makes it a very tiny bit more quick to put it on more than on person. It recharges quickly enough anything more's a waste.

Heal Other and Healing Aura get three heal IOs. Other than that, they don't really need more than maybe a single recharge.

I didn't bother with Absorb Pain (found it too risky), but it sounds like something Jesus might have since he's so self-sacrificing. Just be careful when you use it--it damages and prevents healing you for a brief time afterward.

If you command the enemy to stand still (by using your holds, or by combining stun and an immobilize), you can prevent a lot of damage (which sometimes would otherwise come in faster than you could heal it). Your Fortitudes can also help prevent that damage even if the enemy's still capable of doing damage. Plus any Adrenaline Boost or Regeneration Aura active on the character will tick back that lost health quickly.

And then you heal what damage still gets through all that. If you operate this way, you'll save your teammates' lives far more often--the heals're too low in power on their own but very excellent when combined with other protections. This is very important to understand: this game seems to have weaker heals than other games, but stronger non-healing mitigation methods (mezzes, shields, and so on). You generally won't see defensive buffs anywhere near as large as CoH's in other games.

Blinding Powder confuses, sleeps, lowers -tohit. Yes, it's only mag 2. That's still fewer minions getting that chance (5% at soft cap) to hit you with defense debuffs and other effects. The confusion makes it an additional damage source. Plus it can even help the team's survivability--I know it certainly does when I get sidekicked up to my friend's Nin stalker to kill Rikti and stuff.

It's up to you though. I know I haven't gotten it yet--my Stalker's only 28. My friend seems to use it to good effect, but use your own judgment. Maybe try it out and form your personal opinion?

Macbook, one of the ones with Intel GMA graphic chips. 10.5.8 is my OS version.

Also, I have news: if those of you with similar problems have easy access to a right button, you can constantly right-click as you move your pointer toward the object you're trying to click. This way you can get your pointer onto pretty much anything that was off-limits.

The game just became far more playable if still a nuisance. Still hoping for a fix soon, but now I can do stuff in the game.

CoH's already set to my Macbook's native resolution, and windowed mode doesn't help.

I play a Mind/Emp controller, not an Emp defender, but I thoroughly agree with the thoughts here. It's worth noting though that Emp's really good buffs have significant recharge times. Fortitude, you'll probably get it onto two to three people at most (four if you have a lot of recharge bonuses and don't mind how busy getting it right on the dot will make you), so you have to be strategic about who you buff. Likewise, AB is largely a single-person buff. Recovery and Regeneration Aura won't be up full-time but are really nice and entire teams can get away with more while they're active. Just mind their radius (I try to use them while the team's clustered in one spot, sometimes this is mid-battle).

In general, I Fort anyone taking noticeable damage first (plus a heal of course). If that's less than three people (the number of Fortitude I usually give out), I put the rest onto damage dealers to buff their damage. Sometimes the ones taking the most damage are the biggest damage dealers, in which case you get the best of both worlds, heh. Or they might be people doing a lot of controlling or debuffing (which can draw enormous aggro), in which case you're keeping alive someone who's doing a lot to keep the team rolling nicely.

Adrenaline Boost I throw onto someone still taking noticeable damage even after the Fortitude, or someone constantly running low on endurance. If no one's particularly in need of faster health or endurance regeneration, I just pick out who I think will benefit from the huge recharge rate buff (for example people with long recharge buffs/debuffs/controls/nukes) and throw it onto them. With the new Supersidekicking system, I've found myself teaming with pre-Stamina toons more often. AB helps them out nicely on endurance management.

The nice thing is that with Empathy's multifaceted buffs, you'll often find yourself meeting many of those needs on a single person. Forting someone who's both dealing a lot of damage and taking a lot of damage, or ABing someone who's dipping low in both health and endurance not to mention that nearly everyone can benefit from more recharge speed.

Of course, going in at first you won't know who'll be taking the most damage. Just do your best to guess and generally put them at first onto squishy toons with a lot of damage or debuffs or controls. Or both. You might find yourself adjusting your buff targets as you learn how the team works, and as circumstances change.

Then you use your heals to cover the gaps where damage still get through. Sometimes you won't need to do any healing. Sometimes you'll need to do a LOT of healing. If everyone you can reasonably buff is buffed and there's no healing to be done, that's where your blast set comes in handy. Help kill stuff.

Your blast set's there to be used, and it can be handy. Dark Blast as noted before debuffs your enemies' accuracy (which can stack nicely with Fortitude's defense buff). Sonic Blast increases the entire team's damage by debuffing your enemies' resistance. Ice Blast slows. And so on. Also, some blast sets have controls (commonly a single target hold or stun). Just pick a blast set with effects that you like. That effect can even be just damage if that's what you like. Defenders might not do as much damage, but their damage still helps.

I'll make a few notable caveats about blast secondary effects. Electricity Blast benefits from being paired with additional endurance drains (like the ones in Kinetics and Cold Domination) because endurance drain does nothing unless your enemy is at zero endurance. Energy Blast's knockback can be a benefit or liability and will require learning strategies on not to annoy your teammates. Radiation Blast's defense debuffs are generally more useful in the early game than the late game by which point people tend to have sufficient accuracy slotted (though there're some exceptionally high-defense enemies in the late game--damn you, Rikti drones).

And, of course, you could just pick another Defender primary. There're a lot of excellent ones. The other posters're already doing a good job of covering their strengths.

I like Empathy partly because it's pretty much a fun game to me of trying to figure out who needs what (as opposed to the 'just buff everyone' approach of many other Defender sets). But I also love the Dark Miasma and Traps sets. Kinetics can be interesting for a hectic pace of play (though Speed Boosting large teams annoys me).

The reason those builds take Stamina at 30 is that it can be hard to get Stamina at 20 without pushing off other useful powers.

Placate is useful because it gives you breathing room plus sets up another crit or AS.

Build Up is useful because it gives burst damage to take out a threat quickly.

AS is useful because it helps you rapidly take down the largest threat so you can scrap the other mobs in greater safety.

You want *some* attacks. So that's at least two powers, probably three.

Your mez protection is a very bad idea to put off.

You probably want to get at least one of your defensive toggles.

That doesn't leave a lot of room for the Fitness pool in those early levels, if you take all those powers. Most likely you'd have to choose between your travel pool and Fitness.

Everyone has different priorities, but that is why those builds took Stamina at 30.

While the stripperific costume options tend to make me roll my eyes (partly because I like some of them except for the stripperific bits), I do agree on the general topic of minion customization. And I want female minions, too.

You can have your bikini girls, and I can have my military women in fatigues, tattooed gangster women, and so on. I just don't want bikini girls to be the only options (like is already kinda the case with the witch stuff and some other costume details). I don't care what ridiculous things others might want to do with their minions (stuff like the pimp doesn't create outrage in me, just eye-rolling).

Then again, I have some general outfit frustrations. I want female characters to have access to cigars for example... and especially that awesome Baron jacket. That's the one that most grates on me (it's enough to make me begin to consider breaking my habit of playing women, just to have one on one of my characters).

My Mind/Emp, each of her slots look pretty radically different from each other (even to the point of wild variations in size), and I've given each slot different colors. Each slot is a different person she's taken into herself, with different backstories.

My Fire/Rad, I've found a very interesting dark black/purple/green that looks nastily poisonous. Essentially, she's in a suit to keep her dangerous essences from leaking out and corroding/poisoning/burning/consuming whatever it might come into contact. Her powers are her making use of this hazardous essence.

Not entirely decided on my Grav/Storm (probably bright, strange purple-and-blue mixes for a strange robot) or my Earth/Therm (if I decide to keep her as Earth/Therm).

Very nice! I love not having to reboot into Boot Camp just to use Mids. Can't wait for the planned features.

I've just a request. Could you create a way to delete builds or save over old ones? Right now, I can foresee the builds on my account piling up as I save in-progress builds then complete them later, or update them later on.

The old Mids' update checking points at a different place than the new Mids--the project was basically taken over. That's why you have to manually download this time, but not afterwards.

I like the site, just a comment, though: for escaping those 'trapped in the chatbox', the Escape key actually works as well, though I typically have to hit it twice (once leaves you still in the chatbox).

The suggested playstyles for the ATs... quite useful for the less experienced players this site is intended for. More experienced players might play somewhat different, but that takes really knowing what you're doing in breaking the mold anyway, probably something the apparent intended audience of your site shouldn't be doing until they have more experience.

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Here's a saucy little number that will keep you mashing buttons non-stop.

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While I don't have access to Mids right now, that posted build looks like one that emphasizes Defense? Seems like it could be an interesting though, though I'd likely substitute Hover/Fly if I did it, purely for conceptual reasons. And Ice Mastery fits better in general for my character. Hmm.

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I've managed it on a Kin toon with just Transference

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Was it a controller or defender or corruptor?

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Defender. Kin/Dark, specifically. Mind you, that doesn't have Hotfeet or the like to deal with in terms of endurance consumption, so I can see why an additional source of endurance might be desired. Not to mention that if you're hitting Transference less often, you're spending a bit more time doing other stuff instead.

In terms of trollers I have an Ice/Kin who doesn't have Transference yet, and who will likely level with Stamina until she gets access to it and then try out a Staminaless alt build to see if it works well for her.

There're always alt builds, though, to try it and see if they need Stamina or not (they could even play with and without Stamina and compare the difference). Honestly, the answer will likely vary based on playstyle and slotting, and so on.

Basically, I can see "All you need is Transference!", "You should have two of: Transference, Stamina, or SB", and "The more the better!" as all valid answers, depending. It can be nice to not to have to worry in even the slightest about your blue bar, but some players might put higher priority on what other skills can bring as long as they have enough recovery to basically get the job done regularly. It seems like you've chosen to put the higher priority on keeping the blue bar up high and that's perfectly fine.

Stamina is not really worth three powers in my mind unless you really need it (most toons do though). I take it only out of grudging necessity--I so often have other things I'd rather be taking, even if just as toys for fun. This power pool stuff (and the way their requirements work) is just an irritation to me.

This 'cult of the blue bar' stuff... Don't listen to the fanatics. I say just skip Stamina in that team setup. I've managed it on a Kin toon with just Transference (no outside SBs or anything), I'm pretty sure you can do it on a Fire/Kin duo with consistent SBs.

This idea of progressive shutdown of an AV's powers really is a very good one. I was actually thinking about something similar but very different. (I.e. more holds slowing AVs down more and more until they're gradually rendered incapable of action, more confusion randomizing their actions somewhat with some of their actions being normal and some being confused until finally they're fully confused).

I do like the 'shutdown of specific powers' idea though. It'd let controllers and dominators stop some annoying powers from working without letting them totally dominate the AV.

It'd be a lot of work though, not just implementing this idea but also making tweaks to their AI (which seems to be fairly sensitive judging from some of the AI bugs I've seen in my limited time here).

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Oh, well. Maybe the newbs and drive-by experts will come around someday and focus their complaints in the right direction.

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Those people you talk of missed the problems with PToDs. You seem to have missed the factors that made it hard for many people to even play a Dominator that far. In short, each of you saw particular issues, and missed the other issues.

And there were people citing both problems anyway.

Also, you're seriously mis-categorizing the nature of the endurance/recharge changes. It wasn't because of the overall bump up in damage modifier of the AT, but because of specific power tweaks, mostly to turn faster lighter but weaker attacks into slower heavier hard-hitting attacks. A number of powers had their recharge/endurance untouched.

Hee hee! Yes, I'm quite familiar with the excellency of defeat as the ultimate debuff.

Anyway, yeah, I'm going to do Ice/Stone. It surprised me how many recommendations that combo got in this thread, and when I think about it, I can see why. Energy Absorption goes a long way to addressing one of Stone Melee's biggest issues (endurance consumption), and it combines that with an armor set that has a nice debuff aura and a fun damage aura.