BigBlackAfrica

This is an excellent guide. I'm looking forward to the Dominator - ? + Dark Assault section being completed as I recently rerolled a Plant dom to be Plant/Dark.

In other words; one every 4 months or about 3 a year.

Unless something has changed they will be rotating Celestial Armor out at some point to make room for another Tier 9 VIP costume set. Now we all know that things change so that may not be the case, but it has been stated since the beginning of the Paragon Rewards program that Tier 9 VIP rewards would periodically cycle. Celestial Armor was released in September and Fire and Ice in January. If they keep to that schedule we should see another costume set on ustream in mid to late April for release in mid May.

Mercurial Blow recharges and animates so quickly that early game my attack chain has been

MB - Guarded Spin - MB - Eye of the Storm. This can be done on a Scrapper/Brute by level 6. Before you even have Staff Mastery.

In my experience, I don't see a point to Precise Strike unless you need another place to put Kinetic Combat for softcap.

I have them both on my test scrapper, but I will say that MB's 3 sec recharge and 1 sec cast is VERY nice early on when you don't have many attacks.

I will probably ditch PS for a pool power as it is already unnecessary to my attack chain at 22.

I wouldn't hold your breath for full customization. Considering the amount of work for the devs and the fact that Freemium players below Tier 5 don't even have access to the AT.

I'd settle for being able to have females and maybe being able to change the default colors of their costumes.

I thought the Flying Disc was over priced for what it was, but not badly so. So I just wrote if off as something I enjoyed on the test server and *would* buy, but probably never will since a 25% off sale is still too much. Then I saw this week's update and my jaw hit the floor.

800 points... for a vanity pet... which has a minor (and mostly useless) in-game buff. Even doubling earned influence would not be worth 800 points.

When I told my wife (who has a serious and dangerous Super Pack habit) about the new item this week, she laughed for over a minute. She thought I was messing with her. I had to show her the announcement before she would believe it was serious.

On the bright side, I don't have to worry about stupid impulse buys this week and can continue to save my points for Staff Fighting and Beast Mastery.

250pp for a frisbee "power" is absurd.

All the attuned IO sets that are on sale is nice though. If the sale prices were the regular prices I would buy a lot more of these.

I just can't bring myself to spend $10 real dollars on something I can obtain in game, even if they are attuned. $5 otoh can be rationalized away as "one fewer large latte" this week.

I may regret this, but for the record: I never said I was opposed to a hovering Tank/Brute, and I stated as much without any hostility intended.

I just don't feel it's necessary for the flying brick concept since Flying =/= Hover. My Power Girl inspired brute does not have Hover and I don't miss it.

Nothing is hard to understand. I'm not talking about concept here, just pure pros/cons. As I stated, I have a Flying SS brute, but I choose to take AS because it's pretty much guaranteed knockdown and Hover doesn't really make much sense to me for most melee builds. A melee toon generally gets more out of Combat Jumping than Hover. I think I only have one melee character with Hover (DB/WP Scrapper) and he has it for concept reasons because he's a bird-man with wings. It's not a problem because DB doesn't require him to be on the ground, but incidentally he ALSO has CJ.

Super Strength OTOH has 2 powers which will not work if the character is not on the ground. Considering that the powers are 'ripping up a chunk of earth to toss at someone' and 'stomping your foot/punching the ground and creating a shockwave' I'd say it makes sense.

To the original point. Most "Hover-attacking" is done to mitigate knockback and/or damage by being out of melee range. Not really necessary for a brute/tank. So from a purely numerical/mechanical pov, it makes little sense.

Oh and just for clarification: I've seen a flying Super Strength Brick from comics hovering and fighting, but I've never seen them use Hurl of Foot Stomp while doing so.

I'm not trying to start a "flame-war" here. I just don't understand the seemingly needless hostility of the above post.

I've been playing SS since launch. My main tank and namesake was Inv/SS until I rerolled after i13 to be WP/SS. I also have 3 SS brutes and am completely satisfied with the set as is. Sure Jab is lame and Punch isn't much better, but personally I love how skippable Jab/Punch, Handclap, and Hurl are because that frees up some power picks to fit in the Fighting pool and stuff like Spring Attack to offset limited AoE.

I seriously doubt that if the Devs revisit SS again, they will be adding more AoE. If they nerf FS and Rage, I'll get my torch and pitchfork.

I'd add Thigh High Boots for Males in general. The Ascension Boots are nice, but I just want thigh high boots period.

I can get behind this idea. With the current slotting configuration both the level 47 and 49 power picks are limited in their viability due to the reduced number of slots available. As it stands now, I (and I assume many others) usually use my level 47 and 49 power picks for things I don't need to slot much anyway and put the 48 and 50 slots in other powers.

I remember reading about the Devs trying to figure out a way to start the 3 slots per slot level at 25 when Freedom was in beta but there was an issue with the code.

Not that that would alleviate the issue with level 49 power pick, but it would certainly add more slots over all. Maybe giving more slots at 50 is more possible than 3 at 25, 27, and 29 and would both solve the problem of only ever being able to 4 slot your level 49 power pick AND give us a few more slots to play with in general.

5 slots at both 48 AND 50 would be even better since the only way to get 6 slots in your level 47 pick is to use some of the level 50 slots, leaving the 49 power with even fewer slots.

Dark/Ice/whatever you like best Blaster.

Dark is kind of self explanatory.
Ice can easily be the cold that people often associate with ghostly encounters.

From a min-maxing PoV, this combination is pretty solid. Dark has the only self heal of any Blaster set as well as Knockback, Hold, To Hit Debuff, and Immobilize. Ice has slow movement, - recharge, and - damage to further mitigate the weaknesses of the Blaster AT.

I know there are builds floating around the boards for this combination that pair it with /Electric as the APP. You might also want to consider switching to villain to pick up Mace Mastery and get Scorpion Shield for the S/L/E Def at 35. Really IMHO, your Ancillary/Patron pool can be whatever fits your concept or has the powers you like best.

That's the thing though. It doesn't seem like "multiple solutions" so much as many factors to one solution.

The prevailing opinion on these forums seems to be that any defense buffing power (with the possible exception of Hover) is pretty much a must have for most melee builds.

CJ = non-negotiable + defense, low end cost, + maneuverability
Tough and Weave = make sacrifices to fit them in if you have to.
Maneuvers = fit it in if you can. both you and your team will benefit.

Sometimes I want to take Presence or Medicine or Concealment for conceptual reasons, but I can't bring myself to "gimp" the build by passing on the mitigation powers. It was even worse before Inherent Fitness.