BlackestNight

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Two thumbs up!! Great guide!

One thing on superjump: you mentioned it's bothersome to have to push spacebar all the time, you cant type and i dont know what. I use the following bind on my Superjumpers:

/bind j "powexec_name Super Leap$$++up$$++autorun"

I'm at work and not sure on the name of the power hehe. I think it's Super Leap, but however, this is not the main point of the bind. The ++up and ++autorun part let you use this bind as a toggle. Stand still, hit the button and you'll jump and run til you hit the key again. Then you'll finish your current jump til you land and stand still again.

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I never said there weren't any binds for the power but, just like Teleport, this is a power you can't walk away from, despite what binds you have.

While Flying, for example, you can get up high, press R and go AFK while you fly to the destination. TP and SJ can't because you constantly have to be pressing a key. Super Speed, if you have a nice stretch of land you have to run over without jumping, doesn't have have to be looked after 100% of the time either.

It was a nitpick, nothing more or less. I still find SJ to be the best Travel power.

Just read up on Accuracy.

It was in an "Ask Geko" thread where the Accuracy formula was.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, his formula doesn't help with this situation.

My question, and where I see where we disagree, is when the ToHit Buff is applied (before or after Enhancements) and the equation doesn't tell us.

There was quite a bit of discussion regarding how Accuracy was actually implented after Geko gave the equation, since a lot of the number crunchers were confused by his wording.

To Hit Buffs, as I gathered it, are factored in in response to Defense and then multiplied by Accuracy. However, since Defense is somewhat hard to figure out on enemies, I don't know how we'd be able to determine the effect of To Hit buffs on our Henchmen.

However, as the discussion went on, it seemed that To Hit Buffs were some different animal entirely.

So, my Accuracy could easily be wrong but I was using a Calculator that has been right in all cases (was confirmed by the Dev response given). Perhaps it was my implentation of the Supremacy Buff that threw it off but I still can't confirm or deny how To Hit Buffs work since they seem to be dependant on enemy Defense. What I remember, back in my Dark Defender days and Issue 3 and 4, is that To Hit Buffs were strictly additive to the Enhanced Accuracy of your powers. So, maybe I'm working off of old/obsolete/never true assumptions.

Anyway, this is all babble. I still stick by my 3/2/1 Accuracy per Tier. LoL.

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I looked over your to-hit numbers. I don't know what your calculator is doing, but it is doing it wrong. Supremecy is a to-hit buff which is added in to the base to hit then enhancements are multiplied afterward, just like tactics or focused accuracy. For instance, take a tier one pet fighting a +3 mob with two accuracy SOs (+66% accuracy). The mob is +5 to the pet, for a base chance to hit of 41%. If supremecy was 25%, that would be 41 + 25 or 66% base chance to hit. Multiplied by 1.66 for enhancements, we get 110%, well beyond the cap. Your table lists 82%.

I don't think supremecy is 25% accuracy however. If it was, pets would be capped at low levels against +0s and +1s even with just training accuracies. They seem to miss more than 5% though they still hit noticeable better than a player. I'd guess the bonus is somewhere between +10%-+15%. As far as I know, no one has tested it enough to give a definitive value.

Even if it was only +10%, tiers 1s would be capped against +3 mobs (+5 to them) with 3 accuracy SOs and have an 86% chance to hit a +4 mob (+6 to them). Here is the to hit numbers for the famous purple patch which this is all based on:


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Foes your level have not changed. You have a 75% chance to hit and your powers are 100% effective.
Foes 1 level above you - No Change. You have a 68% chance to hit and your powers are 90% effective.
Foes 2 levels above you - No Change. You have a 61% chance to hit and your powers are 80% effective.
Foes 3 levels above you - You have a 55% chance to hit and your powers are 65% effective.
Foes 4 levels above you - You have a 48% chance to hit and your powers are 48% effective.
Foes 5 levels above you - You have a 41% chance to hit and your powers are 30% effective.
Foes 6 levels above you - You have a 34% chance to hit and your powers are 15% effective.
Foes 7 levels above you - You have a 25% chance to hit and your powers are 8% effective.
Foes 8 levels above you - You have an 11% chance to hit and your powers are 5% effective.
Foes 9 levels above you - You have a 6% chance to hit and your powers are 4% effective.
Foes 10 levels above you - You have a 5% chance to hit and your powers are 3% effective.
Foes 11 levels above you - You have a 5% chance to hit and your powers are 2% effective.
Foes 12+ levels above you - You have a 5% chance to hit and your powers are 1% effective.


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I bring this up because your numbers make tactics look valueable when it is in fact pretty useless for a mastermind (except how it helps teammates). Supremecy provides more than enough of a to-hit buff to overcome the lower tiers' penalty for being behind in level, with the large amount of accuracy masterminds typically slot. In fact, all the leadership powers are just as useless for the endurance they cost. Assault, which you seem to like, is 11% extra base damage. With 3 SO damage in each pet and +25% from supremecy, it amounts to 5% additional damage. Its not nothing, but its highly overrated, a power for a team-oriented character. Keeping your attacks will net you a heck of a lot more damage than assault ever could soloing.

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The enhancement calculator I'm using has those exact figures (from the Devs) as Base to Hit for all the levels you mentioned. Supremacy, since we don't know the exact figure for it, again is assumed.

Supremacy is a ToHit Buff, which means its effect is added, after Accuracy Enhancements are taken into effect, if I remember correctly. I remember from quite some time ago an equation Positron gave giving the exact To Hit. I could be wrong, but I believed ToHit Buffs were added AFTER Enhancements and were direct additions. Again, I don't have the equation in front of me so I could be wrong however, I think it to be ludicrous that ToHit Buffs are then Multiplied by Enhancement values. That makes ToHit Buffs far superior than straight Accuracy in powers. AFAIK, ToHit Buffs are calculated after Accuracy has affected Base ToHit.

If I'm right, my Accuracy #s should be good. I'll look up the equation later.

As for the Damage, again, those are rough shot estimations. I don't care what the Even Con Brawl Index is for my Pets because that never matters. The Brawl Index should be relative to what I'm fighting, not them. Yes, the Purple Patch reduces their damage and that is accounted for because it is assumed they are doing less damage. I couldn't care less of what a Tier 1's *actual* Brawl Index is to a foe of their level since all foes are relative to me and not them.

Hence, I don't care about the impact of the Purple Patch because my Pets will always at their set levels below me. That doesn't change so there's no reason to find out their true values unless you're simply inquisitive.

Addendum

In case you’re wondering, I tried to find the Brawl Index of all Bot Attacks. Now this is a problem because in order to do it, I have to be behind PFF so Supremacy doesn’t kick in. I wanted the raw values so I did just that. Also, because Bot damage doesn’t show up in the Combat window, there’s no way to get values other than integers. So take all of this worth a grain of salt. Testing in PvP would be the best way but I’d need to find someone to test with me.

Here’s the raw data:

Level 34 Bots. Level 36 Council.
Brawl= 8

Battle Drones 95.7% +Dmg
Laser Burst: 6 x 3 (Energy)
-Unenhanced value = 3 x 3
BI = 0.375 x 3 = 1.25

Heavy Laser Burst: 11 (Smashing) +17 (Energy)
-Unenhanced value = 5.6 / 8.7
BI = 0.7 + 1.08 = 1.78

Full Auto Laser: 2 x 17 (Energy)
-Unenhanced value = 1 x 17
BI = 0.125 x 17 = 2.125

Protector Bots 95.7% +Dmg
Laser Burst: 8 x 3 (Energy)
-Unenhanced value = 4 x 3
BI = 0.5 x 3 = 1.5

Heavy Laser Burst: (5 (Smash) + 8 (Energy) x 3
-Unenhanced value = (2.55 (Smash) + 4 (Energy)) x 3
BI = (0.318 + .5) x 3 = 2.45

Photon Grenade: 15 (Energy) + 8 (Smashing)
-Unenhanced value = 7.66 + 4
BI = .95 + .5 = 1.45 (Primary power has 1.222 +.555 and I gather this is the same power if I knew 15.xx in the energy column)

Seeker Drones: 14 (not sure what damage type)
-Unenhanced value = 7.15
BI = 0.89

Assault Bot 95.7% + Dmg
Plasma Blast: 39 (Energy)
-Unenhanced value = 19.9
BI = 2.49

Dual Plasma Blast: 19 (Energy) + (8 (Energy) x 6)
-Unenhanced value = 9.7 + (4 x 6)
BI = 1.21 + (.5 x 6) = 4.21 (I had measured this previously at level 26 and got 4.5)

Flamethrower: 8 x 8 (Fire)
-Unenhanced value = 4 x 8
BI = 0.5 x 8 = 2.0

Melee Smash: 60
-Unenhanced value = 30.66
BI = 3.83 (previously measured at 4.0)

Swarm Missiles: 9 x 9 (Fire)
-Unenhanced value = 4.6 x 9
BI = 0.57 x 9 = 5.2

Incendiary Missiles: 4 (Fire) x 8 + Ignite (4 Fire damage)
-Unenhanced value = 2 x 8 + Ignite (2)
BI = 0.25 x 8 = 2.0 + (0.25 x some number)

Overall, the values seem to be low compared to what I had tested earlier. This is just a shot in the dark so don’t take these values to heart. They’re more like estimates rather than exact figures. I’ll try to get recharge times eventually and add to this some more.
If anyone has more exact values than these, post them and I’ll do the Brawl Index.

Blackest Night's Ultimate Bots/FF Guide (I6)

Tactics, Tips, and Tricks

- Masterminds practically need a good set of binds to function. Use Khaiba’s Numeric Keypad Controls and you’ll love it.

- Use Focus Fire. Until your Bots get AoEs at 32, you’ll want to take out single targets and remove their damage from the equation. Focus all firepower on the Super Star Destroyer…er…single enemies to kill them as fast as possible. Also, as tempting as it may be, until you get AoEs, don’t send Tiers of your Henchmen against multiple targets. Only the Assault Bot will be able to go toe-to-toe with anything of substance alone. 3 Battle Drones could easily all get one-shotted by Melee damage from minions.

- GoTo is your friend. If one of your Bots runs into Melee range, GoTo him back toward you. Even GoTo_All is better than nothing. Use GoTo especially in doorways where your Bots will clump up and keep each other and other teammates from going through. The Numpad Controls makes this incredibly easy.

- Aggressive is not always your best friend. While I do leave my Bots in Aggressive most of the time, there are definitely times when you want to keep a low profile, like during the Respec Trial. Putting them on Passive allows you to hand-pick targets but at the same time Protectors will not Bubble or Heal (so be warned!). Defensive is similar but they will attack anything that attacks them or you and mid-battle, that means they’re pretty much doing the same thing as Aggressive.

- Walls are your best friends. Force Bolt can keep an enemy on their tush for about as long as you can keep a hit streak going and Force Bubble will simply ram them all together against the wall. Repulsion Field will keep them knocked around as well. Use the walls to your advantage.

- Keep on top of your Bot’s health. If you ever have to hesitate to which Bot you want to heal first, simply heal one so that the recharge on Aid Other can come up faster. Waiting two seconds to see which one needs it more meant that you have to wait another 2 seconds for Aid Other to come up. When all else fails, just heal the closest one. Battle Drones will have their health all over the place while the Assault Bot is steadier. If the Assault Bot begins to bite it, he takes priority. His death means a massive loss of firepower and tanking ability. A loss of a Drone does not. However, like I said, if you do lose the Assault he can be re-summoned and re-equipped/upgraded quite quickly so don’t despair.

- Henchmen wipes happen and you don’t have to go down with the ship. Rule number one is this: your life is worth far more than your Bots’. Do not put yourself into excessive danger to bail out even the Assault Bot. It’s not worth it. If the battle starts going downhill and you see that your Bots are getting overwhelmed, make a hasty withdrawal or put up PFF and withdraw. If you can, order your Bots to follow you and run a distance away from the enemy, preferably past their “cut-off point” where they turn around and go back. Then, re-summon what you lost, re-equip and go back at it. You lost no XP, gained no Debt, and have no lasting consequences minus the endurance spent to re-summon and the time lost. Don’t lose your head.

- Bubbling. Fully slotted Bubbled will have an effect on your Bots and will increase their survivability. The only thing stopping you from Bubbling each one and every time the Bubbles run out is your own impatience. Call it what it is. I’m impatient and don’t Bubble my Bots unless I remember to or before a big fight. I seem to get by alright but there are times where they get creamed and I know the Bubbles would have prevented that. The same goes for Bubbling teammates. Do it because that is your role. I know it sucks and is tedious but it helps everyone out for you to take one for the team. If you put Endurance reducers in Insulation/Deflection, you won’t even have to drop your Toggles.

- Levels 18-24 are typically the worst levels in a Bots/FF career. You only have 1 Protector and have 3 Drones, all of which do little damage on their own and have to combine firepower to be decent. The Drones are -2, you don’t have access to SOs yet (nor can you probably afford them), and your Damage is sub par compared to most others on your team. You can’t seem to find a role because you sure as heck can’t tank and you sure as heck can’t out-damage anyone. Just do your best to help your teammates and provide whatever middle-ground assistance you can. At 24, things speed up because of the 2nd Protector and you’re only 2 levels away from the Assault Bot.

- The Respec. I highly suggest having a pre- and post-Respec Build. Finding teammates to Respec with is not difficult, even if it is a Pick-Up-Group. Pre-Respec, pick up the Primary Rifle attacks (at least one) and try to maximize your Defense. Your Damage will never be all that great until 26 so don’t try to compete with other ATs for damage. The Respec itself is difficult but doable. Make sure everyone is the same level because the spawns are +2 higher than the highest player on the team. Big teams cause a higher Vine count so be wary of the 8-man uber team. This may be the hardest part but I’d wait until 26 to Respec. Get your Assault Bot before attempting it otherwise you’ll be a third (or 4th, or 5th…) wheel. There’s nothing you can offer that another AT can’t outperform you in before 26. At least with the Assault Bot you can dish out damage and take some too. At 24, your Two Protectors and 3 Drones are mincemeat. If you maximize your Defense, at least your teammates and Bots are protected as they try to fight the Vines/AV.

Post-respec, get those SOs in your Bots and they’ll start lighting up the enemies. 26-32 is fast and furious if you fully SO your Bots and Bubbles and once you hit 32, you’ll breeze through the next few levels. The 30’s open up a ton of slots for you to use on earlier powers and you might find yourself with slots you don’t know what do with. Be alert, however, enemies start to ramp up in HP as you approach 40 and you won’t be able to melt them like you could when you first hit 32. The 40s-50s will be similar as your overall damage output doesn’t decrease but enemies’ HP increases to the point that you can’t walk all over them anymore. (Of course, this is from my CoH days and experience, CoV may not be the case)

- A Mastermind’s Role. As a Bots/FF, I’d say your role is to protect the team. I know it sucks but that’s how it is. You have a very Defensive powerset that can boost survivability so use it. Post-32, this changes as you can now melt +2 and 3 Minions faster than just about any other AT. Teaming with a Brute or Stalker makes life really easy because you can blow through the minions while they take out the higher HP targets like Lts. and Bosses. On big teams, your role gets a little hazy because Corruptors can support a team better than you and Brutes/Corruptors can out-damage you but you still have a Defensive powerset at your disposable and significant damage so fill in the gaps of your team.

- Teaming with other Masterminds. I’m a big fan of limiting the number of MMs on my teams to two (including myself) simply because of pathing and lag issues. However, I do love me a good teammate with Robotics. Bots MMs go well together because Protectors will heal any robot in range and when you have 4 Protectors, that’s a lot of healing. Also, the Protectors will Bubble everything in site, meaning Quadruple Bubbles. It’s hard for me to imagine 3 or more Bots/* MMs teaming but the synergy would be amazing.

- More tips and tricks will be forthcoming as I think of them and as other people raise issues. Stay tuned to this thread for more up-to-date info.







Appendix A

I found this old spreadsheet from a while back that had a nice ToHit calculator on it. I modified it a little to include Supremacy. Here are some definitive numbers for your Henchmen. All values include Supremacy.

Tier 1: (-2)___1 Acc________2 Acc_______3 Acc
+0 – 81.3_____101.6_______122_________140.7
+1 – 73.3______91.6_______110_________126.8
+2 – 64_________80_______96 (105)_____110.7
+3 – 54.66_____68.3_______82 (90) ______94.5 (103)
+4 – 45.53_____56.9_______68.3(75)_____78.77 (86)

Tier 2: (-1)___1 Acc________2 Acc_______3 Acc
+0 – 90.6_____113.25______135_________156.74
+1 – 81.33____101.6_______122_________140.7
+2 – 73.3_____91.6 (102)___110_________126.8
+3 – 64 ______80 (89)______96__________110.7
+4 – 54.66____68.3 (76)_____82 (90)______94.5 (103)

Tier 3: (+0)___1 Acc_______2 Acc________3 Acc
+0 – 100_____125_________150_________173
+1 – 90.6_____113.25______135_________156.74
+2 – 81.33____101.6_______122_________140.7
+3 – 73.3_____91.6 (102)___110_________126.8
+4 – 64_______80 (89)______96__________110.7

Tactics throws all those numbers off some but in a good way. With base Tactics, your Tier 3 Henchman (with 1 Acc SO) will be capped (95%) attacking +3s.

My personal opinion is to slot according to +3s because that is what you’ll generally be fighting. Strike Forces will be +2-3 of you and Relentless missions have +3 spots in them.

With that being said, it seems the best slotting (for +3s) would be 3/2/1 for your Tiers. Tactics, base or slotted, would help pad that against accuracy debuffs and against targets higher than +3.

If you’re wondering what slotted Tactics would do, the parentheses show what 3-slotted Tactics does. Tier 2 is where it’s tricky. If you feel that 1 Acc + Tactics is enough, you can do that but 2 Acc looks much more appealing. Same goes for 2 Acc + Tactics in your Tier 1s. It’ll get you by quite nicely but if you stray into the +3s, or +4s, you’ll miss consistently. Tactics seems best used for your Teammates and not your Henchmen although the Perception and Accuracy would help against foes that debuff Accuracy.

Appendix B

Defense Numbers

Deflection: 9% (14.4%), Smash/Lethal, Melee
Insulation: 9% (14.4%), Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative, Range
Dispersion: 6% (9.6%), All, Area of Effect
Force Shield: 3.5% x 2 (5.2% x 2), All
Maneuvers: 2.75% (4.31%), All
Weave: 2.5% (4%), All
Stealth: 2.5%, All
Invisibility: 3.5%, All
Grant Invisibility: 3.5%, All
Combat Jumping: 2.5%, All
Hover: 2.5%, All

Theoretically, you could get as much as 46% Defense if you took all those powers. I cannot stress enough how much I advise against it because you’ll sacrifice everything for it but…to each his own.

Slotted (3 SOs) Defense is in parentheses. I run Relentless missions using fully slotted Big 3 and that’s it. Force Shields on my Protectors are base. Therefore, I run around with about 30% Defense on my Bots. I, as the MM, only have about 13%.

Those taking Maneuvers instead of Assault and slotting their Protectors for Defense will have a grand total of about 38% Defense on their Bots and will have around 19% Defense on them personally. Taking any of the other Pool Powers, like Combat Jumping or Stealth, simply adds to that value.

What’s the difference between my Bots and the Defensive Bots? My Bots do 11% more damage due to Assault and my Protectors do anywhere from double to triple the damage of my Defensive Protectors. Triple you say? If you 3-slot for Defense in Protectors, that leaves you two slots to play with. If you have one Accuracy and One Damage, my Bots are going to hit 10% more and 66% harder. If they skip Damage or Accuracy altogether, my Protectors will hit roughly 30% more and 100% harder. You be the judge at which is better.

Endurance Costs

Some of you may wonder how Endurance is with Bots/FF and I’m happy to oblige you with some info. I can’t be incredibly thorough (having 1, 2, or 3 SOs in the power gives 3 different results) but I can tell you some common combinations. All of these combos will have the number of Endurance SOs in parentheses. Base Endurance Recovery is 1.667 End/Sec and the numbers I give will be what’s left of that Endurance after the toggles are accounted for. All Leadership (Lead.) Toggles cost the same.

Dispersion (3), Lead. (1) = 1.03 (61% remaining for use)
Dispersion (3), Lead. (1), Lead. (1) = 0.737 (44% remaining)
Dispersion (3), Lead. (2), Lead. (2) = 0.86 (51.5% remaining)
Disp. (3), Lead. (1) x 3 = 0.334 (20%)
Disp. (3), Lead. (2) x 3 = 0.628 (38%)
Disp. (3), Repulsion (3), Force Bubble (3) = 0.6 (36%)
Disp. (3), Repulsion (3), Lead. (2) x 2 = 0.33 (20%)
Disp. (3), Lead. (2) x 2, Force Bubble (3) = 0.66 (40%)
Disp. (3), Lead. (3) x 3, Force Bubble (3) = 0.551 (33%)
Fly (2), PFF (0) = 0.166 (10%)
Fly (2), Dispersion (3) = 0.16 (9%)
Fly (3), Dispersion (3), PFF (1) = 0.05 (3%)

Stamina:
0 SOs = +0.507
1 SO = +0.675
2 SOs = +0.844
3 SOs = +0. 988

Add the Stamina values to the above values if you wanted to know what Stamina does for you.

So, there you have the Ultimate Bots/FF Guide. I put a lot of work into it and I hope it sticks around as long as my Dark/Dark Defender guide. Feel free to start up conversation here in this thread so we can answer as many questions as possible!

Here’s what my proposed level 40 build is for Rogue Spark. I will have to see if Stamina is worth it or not. If I don’t think it is, I’ll respec at 35 and switch out Fitness for Repair, Hasten, and a toss up between Detention Field and Super Speed (Fly is great but it sucks being slow, the stealth will help too).

Exported from version 1.5C of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Mastermind
Primary Powers - Ranged : Robotics
Secondary Powers - Support : Force Fields

01 : Force Bolt acc(01) rng(37)
01 : Battle Drones acc(01) acc(3) dam(3) dam(5) dam(5) acc(31)
02 : Deflection Shield defbuf(02) defbuf(7) defbuf(7) endred(34)
04 : Insulation Shield defbuf(04) defbuf(9) defbuf(9) endred(34)
06 : Equip Robot endred(06)
08 : Air Superiority acc(08)
10 : Aid Other recred(10) recred(11) hel(11) hel(25) hel(29) recred(40)
12 : Protector Bots acc(12) dam(13) dam(13) dam(15) acc(33) endred(31)
14 : Fly endred(14) endred(15) fltspd(17) fltspd(17) fltspd(19) endred(37)
16 : Personal Force Field defbuf(16) endred(40)
18 : Aid Self recred(18) recred(19) hel(34) hel(36) hel(39)
20 : Dispersion Bubble defbuf(20) defbuf(21) defbuf(21) endred(23) endred(23) endred(25)
22 : Assault endred(22) endred(40)
24 : Tactics endred(24) endred(37)
26 : Assault Bot acc(26) dam(27) dam(27) dam(29) acc(31)
28 : Swift runspd(28)
30 : Health hel(30)
32 : Upgrade Robot recred(32) recred(33) recred(33)
35 : Stamina endrec(35) endrec(36) endrec(36)
38 : Force Bubble endred(38) endred(39) endred(39)

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Power Pools

I wouldn’t say that there are any mandatory pools for Bots/FF but I can highly suggest a few. Certain others don’t make much sense for a MM, while others come down to personal preference. Travel Powers are always at your discretion and some people swear by some and curse others but I’ll remain as objective as possible.

Medicine

Aid Other: Probably the single best Power Pool pick you take as a Bots/FF, this short range, interruptible, power heals an ally (teammate or Henchmen) for 20% of your life and has a recharges every 10 seconds. There are a couple drawbacks to Aid Other that should be mentioned briefly. The first is that you can’t use it on the move or if you’re under any kind of status effect or Debuff as these will interrupt the power (but still take your Endurance). The second is that is has fairly short range and a long-ish animation that keeps you from performing other actions. It doesn’t cost much (6.5) so you can spam it and I highly suggest slotting this up with as many heals as you can. 3-slotted for Heal, you can net almost another 20% for a grand total of 40% of your life imparted to an ally. Aid Other, when fully slotted for Heals, will typically heal a Tier 1 about 90%, a Tier 2 about 75% and a Tier 3 about 55%. Since you can also slot for Recharge (which I also highly recommend), you could also bring its recharge down to about 5 Seconds with 3, but I only recommend 2. The difference between 2 Recharge SOs and 3 is less then a second and if you have green SOs, the difference is even less. I say stick with 2 Recharges because the slot could be used elsewhere. So, 2 Recharge and 3 Heal would be the best as it heals quickly and heals a lot when you need it.

Stimulant: Since the Bots you travel with already have Fear/Disorient/Sleep protection and your Dispersion Bubble protects against Holds/Disorients/Immobilization, you’ve pretty much covered all the bases and this power is superfluous. It’s not a bad power to take if you want to help out teammates but since I so highly suggest Aid Other, this shouldn’t be the first power you take out of the Medicine line, nor the second. If you want to pick it up, be my guest, as it will help your teammates but like I said, you’re already providing some Mez protection in Dispersion.

Aid Self: This is another gem in the Medicine line because as a /FF you have no way of healing yourself. Granted, this is a second-rate heal (compared to the Secondary Heals of the other sets) that can’t be used on the move nor if you’re being damaged, debuffed, or under some kind of status effect. However, it can be used while under Personal Force Field, which allows you to fire off this heal without worrying too much about what’s going on around you. It heals for 20% of your life, like Aid Other, but has twice the recharge (20 seconds) so it would be prudent to slot for Recharge and Heals so that you get the most bang for your buck and have it up reasonably often. Again, you could heal for about 40% of your life in a single application and with 1 Recharge, it would be up every 15, 2 Recharges it would be up every 12 seconds, 3 Recharges would be every 10. It’s up to you to decide how often you think you’ll need to heal yourself. I stuck with 2 and have found that to be adequate.

Resuscitate: Raising fallen allies is always a plus but I could never find room for this power. It doesn’t let you revive Henchmen but being a team-player never hurts. Inevitably, people will die on Strike Forces or 8-man teams and it sucks for no one to have a Rez ability. While Resuscitate isn’t a terribly great Rez (on par with an Awaken), it does get the job done so take it if you have room in your build and plan to team a lot. Solo, the power is useless.

Flight

Hover: A prerequisite to Fly, Hover lets you well, hover for low cost and adds a tiny amount of Defense. It’s slow, brutally slow if you get it at 6, but it lets you get out of Melee range and control your Bots from a better vantage point. I’m not a fan of Hover for Bots/FF because how fluid many battles are and if you’re too slow, you won’t be able to keep your Henchmen or Team in Dispersion Bubble. The only way around this is to slot Hover with 3 Fly Enhancements (which will allow you to move at around normal running speed) or not take it at all and save the slots. I’ve seen a lot of effective MMs flying around the battlefield with slotted Hover so I’m not knocking it but I, personally, wouldn’t invest 3 slots to be able to move vertically in battle.

Air Superiority: Another prerequisite to Fly, Air Superiority is arguably the best Pool Power melee attack. It has a Brawl Index of 2.778 (same as your first Pulse Rifle attack), has a 4 second recharge, has a –Fly effect and has a 90% chance to Knockdown an enemy. I took this instead of Hover so I could have another power that can keep an enemy from an attacking (the first power being Force Bolt). Knockback and Knockdown are two separate classes of status effect and unlike multiple Knockbacks not registering (if they’re too close together, extra Knockbacks have no effect), Knockdown followed by Knockback keeps the enemy down longer. I can also cycle between AS and Force Bolt readily because they have the same recharge and this keeps just about a single target down indefinitely. It’s obviously useful against Fliers that are annoying you but since your Bots are ranged, it’s usually not a huge a problem. Now some of you may ask the rationale of the squishiest AT running up into Melee range to use AS. Good question! I don’t! I only use AS if the enemies run to me and I can’t keep them all off with Force Bolt alone. It allows me to throw one guy away with FB and then knock another down next to me with AS. I then switch to FB on the guy next to me to get him out of melee range. It works quite well. I don’t use AS all the time but when I do, I usually needed it.

Fly: It’s the slowest Travel Power by far but boy does it make the Rogue Isles a lot easier to traverse. I tried Super Jump for 26 levels and while it was markedly faster, it’s annoying to hold the Space Bar down all the time. I finally gave up and took Fly and decided to slot it up to make it competitive. Trying to avoid Stamina, I added 2 Endurance Reductions (I might add a third later) and to keep it at a decent speed, I also slotted 3 Fly Enhancements. “5 Slots to make a travel power worthwhile?” you ask while scratching your head. Yes, it took 5 to make it worthwhile while Super Jump only required the default slot but again, this is a quality of life issue and you’d be surprised how far some people go to make the game less irritating. Fly slotted this way is quite manageable, both endurance-wise and speed-wise. Originally costing 2.03 End/Sec, two Endurance SOs drop it to 1.2 End/Sec, enough to allow you to run Personal Force Field while Flying. This is by far the safest way to Travel, barring some kind of Phase Shift power. How fast is it, you ask? It’s slightly faster than unslotted Super Jump, but noticeably slower than a single-slotted Super Jump (about 15 feet/sec slower, or 10 mph). It’s still the slowest, but it’s not moving at a snail’s pace.

Group Fly: One little perk about being a Robotics MM is that if you use Group Fly, your Bots turn on their leg boosters. It looks cool and makes you feel pretty good about yourself. But the problem is that Group Fly is more of a hindrance than a help in most situations. For starters, your Bots will not keep up with you, even if you don’t slot Group Fly with Fly enhancers. Seconds, it costs the same as Fly but is only about half the speed of Fly (which is slow to begin with). Also, flying allies get a -20% Accuracy added on to them so attacking while airborne penalizes you. To put it realistically, Group Fly would just about negate the Accuracy bonus from Supremacy. It is nice to be able to take your Bots with you over troublesome areas, like Orenbega maps or over a large area of a zone, but because of its cost and slow speed (not to mention Bots dropping from the air if they get too far), I can’t recommend getting this power unless you simply want to look cool.

Leaping

Jump Kick: Melee Pool Power attacks bad for Mastermind. You no take. Seriously, I had an argument with Air Superiority being a control power but Jump Kick has no such excuse. They simply don’t do enough damage to warrant the risk you put yourself in when entering melee.

Combat Jumping: This is always an excellent prerequisite to Super Jump because you can bounce around in combat and also receive Immobilization protection. The tiny Defense it gives also helps but that shouldn’t be the reason you take it. Take it for the mobility it provides you and because of its insanely low cost (.08 end/sec). This will allow you to control yourself in the air quite well so you can position yourself better. CJ also works great with Hurdle from the Fitness line as a pseudo-travel power. I wouldn’t slot for anything besides a Jump Enhancement because the Defense is so tiny that it’s not worth slotting.

Super Jump: The Rogue Isles need a better urban planner because it’s impossible to get anywhere on foot. City of Villains has a lot of vertical landscapes and without any kind of vertical movement, you’ll find yourself running way out of the way to get where you want to go. Super Jump alleviates both the vertical and speed problem most people have and is arguably the best travel power out there. Almost as fast as Super Speed with a nice vertical component, Super Jump will let you travel the Rogue Isle’s in quick order and for very little endurance. However, like mentioned earlier, there are a few drawbacks. Holding the Space Bar down really makes it hard to type and you can’t just hit “R” and go. Timing jumps becomes second nature eventually but until then you might find yourself falling down alleyways or not hit the bridge you wanted to hit. Also, while you can jump pretty high, it might not be high enough for some obstacles. The wall in Cap Au Diable is one such obstacle that a single Super Jump can’t get over. Super Jump is also the one travel power that is really difficult to use in missions because you’ll bang your head on the ceiling trying to get up to speed. You have also have to jump about every half a second to keep it low enough. Despite its shortcomings, though, Super Jump is an excellent travel power even with only a Jump enhancer in the default slot.

Acrobatics: Any kind of Mez protection is usually a good idea for a Squishie but since you already have Dispersion, it’s not as necessary. Acrobatics does provide knockback/down protection which is also a plus but if you’re trying hold off Stamina, an extra toggle doesn’t help. You can decide whether or not you need the extra protection by how much you get thrown around. If it’s little to none, don’t worry about Acrobatics but if you do, think about investing an Endurance reducer into it.

Speed

Flurry: Looks cool but don’t get it. Melee attacks are no-nos.

Hasten: Hasten is one of those powers that I really wish I didn’t need to burn an entire Pool on. For 120 seconds, you get a 70% reduction in Recharge speeds and this helps immeasurably with Bot Summon speed and…Upgrade speed. You can knock that Upgrade recharge down to 35 seconds with Hasten alone and down to 23 if you 3-slot for Recharge. That goes a long way in knocking down that initial set up time. In battle, your powers come up faster, yes, but you might not have the Endurance to use them. Without Stamina, Hasten may cause more problems than it solves. However, if you slot your powers right you might be able to afford the extra endurance burned because your powers are available more often.

Super Speed: Speed freaks everywhere have been taking Super Speed so that they can get from point A to point B as fast as possible but in the Rogue Isles, Point B might be 200 feet off the ground compared to A. Super Speed lost a lot of its luster after surveying the Rogue Isles but it still can be used effectively. You just simply have to know the routes of level ground are. Grabbing a Jump boosting power, like Combat Jumping and/or Hurdle helps a lot while some people, like myself, had Fly or Super Jump already and added Super Speed into the mix. Super Speed + Super Jump is excellent, traveling insanely fast and with all of Super Jump’s perks. Super Speed also has a Stealth effect to it so you will draw less attention that a Super Jumper passing through the area. It’s also cheap and caps its speed with just two SOs.

Whirlwind: Surprisingly, Whirlwind is quite similar to Repulsion Field in that it causes Knockback to everyone around it, however, it has twice the range and less Endurance cost! However, since I’ve never actually used Whirlwind, I can’t compare the two directly. I don’t believe you can do anything else while Whirlwind-ing, while you can with Repulsion Field and I don’t believe Whirlwind had the de-toggle effect. If you have Hasten and Super Speed already, Whirlwind might be a way to get foes off of you, a la Repulsion Field but I couldn’t tell you if that’s viable or not.

Fitness:

Swift: Increases your running speed without having to turn on Sprint, Swift is actually a boon because you’ll be running at the same speed as your Bots and those pesky Hostages. You won’t outdistance them, like you would with Sprint, and you won’t be running a toggle. Also, the ability to run around faster in battle is quite good, especially if you’re trying to use an Aid Other on a Bot or teammate. This won’t make or break your game but it’s a nice passive boost on the way to Stamina.

Hurdle: Most people say that Hurdle is the better of the two Fitness level 6 Powers because it gives so much increased speed when you jump (literally, double normal running speed). As long as you don’t mind jumping everywhere, those people are right. It also gives an additional 6 feet to your Jump (Combat Jumping adds 8). Slotting Hurdle and taking Combat Jumping gives a remarkably fast pseudo-travel power. If you put 1 Jump Enhancer in CJ, Hurdle, and Sprint, you can travel as fast as 2-slotted Fly! If you want to boost that Speed, slot Hurdle with 3 Jump Enhancers and you’ll be clipping along faster than 3-slotted Fly. For max, non-travel power speed, 3 slot Hurdle and Sprint with Jumps and you’ll be jumping as fast as Super Jump with a Jump Enhancer in the Default slot. You’ll have used 4 slots but saved a power. I wouldn’t recommend that approach but it’s a way around getting a Travel Power at 14. You definitely don’t jump as high as Super Jump but you’ll still be jumping 30-40 feet in the air.

Health: Not the most exciting power out there, Health gives +40% Regen. What this does for you is reduces the time it takes to go from 0 health to Full by about 90 seconds. It won’t save you mid-battle but it will help you recover from battles faster. Some have thought about slotting Health up but it doesn’t give enough of a bonus (especially for a MMs incredibly low HP) to be worth it. Stick with the default slot and put a Heal in it.
It also gives Sleep resistance, that is, if you’re slept you’ll come out of it faster but it doesn’t protect against sleep, meaning if you’re hit with a Sleep it will absorb it and you won’t feel the effects. Since Dispersion Bubble does not have Sleep protection, Health will get you back from the ZZZ faster.

Stamina: The debate rages on whether or not MMs need Stamina and so far in my playing experience I have not needed it. I can run Dispersion, Assault, and Tactics and Bubble my entire team or Henchmen without dropping Toggles. I have slotted my Toggles for Endurance Reduction heavily and found that I don’t need Stamina but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it. If you want to run Repulsion, Dispersion, Leadership, and Force Bubble, I’d say get Stamina because there is no way you can do all of that with Base recovery, even if they’re all slotted with 3 Endurance reductions, and still be able to use powers like Aid Other or Force Bolt (woe to you if you have to re-summon!). The great problem with Stamina is that it takes 3 powers to get and for a MM, that can be hard considering that you *can* play without it. Many of the ATs practically need Stamina but we are not one of them. If you can avoid it, I would.

Teleport

Recall Friend: Always a handy power, you can TP a teammate or a Henchman to you from just about anywhere. This speeds missions along and it helps when your Henchmen get stuck going up/down elevators or whatnot.

Teleport Foe: Also handy because you can teleport a foe directly into the hellfire that your bots will unleash on them. Of course, it will aggro all the mobs you just teleported the deceased fellow from but at least you know they’re coming.

Teleport: Like Fly, this is a power you’ll have to slot up if you want to be effective. While it’s still the fastest travel power out of the box (and bar none), it requires the most finesse…and computing power. Teleport can kill the framerate of older computers as they try to load all the geometry all at once, instead of while in transit. Lag can be bad but if your cpu is up to snuff, you can really cook with Teleport. 3 endurance Reducers and 3 Range increases allow you to go about 160 mp/h, or about 150% faster than capped Super Speed. Everyone will be in your dust as you travel 470 feet per jump (235 feet/second). This is incredibly endurance intensive if you don’t slot for Endurance or have Stamina and it requires all your attention. A bind is also virtually necessary. When I have used Teleport I bound it to my left Shift key (some use left Alt but Shift is easier to reach for me). Just type /bind lshift “powexec_name Teleport” and there ya go. Unfortunately, you can’t target the air and go X amount of feet, you always go max distance but once you get used to it, you’ll be fine.

Group Teleport: This one can be useful because of all the Henchmen you bring with you. You could TP out of a hairy situation (as long as you’re not hit, it is interruptible) or TP into a hairy situation, should you so desire. It costs the same as Teleport but it doesn’t have the range. It’s about 2/3s as fast as TP but it can bring others along with you. If you already have Recall Friend and Teleport, it might be worth a shot. Try it out to see if it’s worth anything to your playstyle.

Leadership

Maneuvers: Giving only 2.75% Defense to All, Maneuvers can help with Defense but only by a little. Fully slotted with 3 Defense SOs, you’ll get 4.31%, which in addition to Dispersion Bubble, will net you about 14% total to All. Granted, that’s not bad but it’s not worth 3 slots and the toggle. I know any Defense you can get is good but in comparison to the next power, I just don’t see how Maneuvers can compare. If you feel Defense is better than Damage, be my guest.

Assault: Boosting damage is king in this game because the faster you can take down an enemy the less chance they have of turning around and killing you. This is how Brutes and Stalkers survive: killing faster than the enemies can kill them. I promote the same approach because Bots will eventually do a hefty amount of damage and can kill many foes in seconds. Assault adds a respectable 11.25% Damage to everyone around you and while it can’t be slotted for more damage, it doesn’t require more slots to be effective. Just throw an Endurance Reduction (or two) in it and you just added 11% more damage to Supremacy’s 25%. That means that with Assault and Supremacy, you’ve added an SOs worth of damage to all your Henchmen. I wouldn’t pass that up. Assault also adds Confuse protection, so your Bots don’t turn on you. Your Bots do not naturally possess this so they can get Confused by many Mezzers in the game.

Tactics: Generally this is why you get Leadership. Tactics boosts Accuracy to everyone around you while also giving them a Perception bonus (useful in PvP). Masterminds get a 10% out of this, which doesn’t seem like much, but it can be slotted with ToHit Buffs. ToHit Buffs only give 20% per SO (Type B) but you can boost that 10% up to 16%, which adds to your Supremacy Bonus of 25% giving you a grand total of 41% more Accuracy. Your Battle Drones will greatly appreciate it! Teammates also benefit from the Buff and lower level Teammates will be able to hit more often, helpful to everyone because they’re an extra body doing something to the enemy, instead of missing wildly. If you plan to go without Stamina, slot for Endurance Reduction at first and slot ToHit Buffs when you get the chance to (probably in the 30’s).

Vengeance: If it worked on fallen Henchmen, this would be an incredibly useful power but alas, it does not. Vengeance does a lot of things once a teammate dies. It restores a small amount of health, boosts Accuracy and Damage, and also gives a Defense Buff (for MMs, it’s 27.5% to all). It has a 5 minute Recharge, so you won’t fire it off often but should a Teammate fall, it gives a very nice boost. I don’t know the exact +Dmg/+Acc values but I assume they’re decent nor do I know how much health you get back. I’ve never actually seen the power used as either a Hero or Villain, though I have seen it used plenty of times by Nemesis troops. I say anything that needs a death to use is probably not a good idea because, even though deaths will happen, you’re trying to prevent them, not capitalize off them. Woe to the team-player that doesn’t help a teammate so they can use Vengeance!

Concealment

Stealth: Stealth provides, well stealth, and a slight Defense Buff to you and allows you to sneak around much better. It is not Invisibility, however, and you will be seen if you get close enough. Stealth De-Buffs your movement speed so if you have it on, it will slow you down. A power like Swift will offset this, however, if you’re using it mostly on the ground. The Defense it provides is a little strange. If you haven’t been spotted, it gives 2.5% Defense to All but when you are spotted, it cuts that Defense in half. 1.25% Defense really isn’t going to save you so don’t slot this power for Defense but rather Endurance Reduction because it will drain you if used in conjunction with other Toggles. Another thing about Stealth is that it will not suppress Supremacy or other Buffs, unlike Invisibility. You can be Stealthed and suffer no penalty minus the Endurance drain and the movement de-buff.

Grant Invisibility: This is an incredibly handy power if you want to stealth a mission and just get it over with. Grant Invisibility gives Invisibility (meaning most enemies cannot see you, even if you get up in their face) to allies for two minutes in addition to a 3.5% Defense Buff. If you’re planning on taking Invisibility, take this power first so you and your entire team can walk around unseen (seems a bit silly for you to be the only one the enemy can see!). Because this is a Buff, the Invisibility gained from this power will not suppress Supremacy or other Buffs (unlike the power Invisibility).

Invisibility: Invisibility is a toggle that turns you invisible so that you can’t be seen, even at close range. It is a costly toggle, 1.27 End/Sec, and will require Endurance Reductions to be made useful should you want to run other Toggles. It gives a 3.5% Defense Boost while active, but the Defense will be suppressed if you are discovered. Invisibility will also suppress Supremacy (like Personal Force Field) and other Buffs since you cannot attack while Invisible. If you were to run around Invisible with Personal Force Field on, I don’t think there is a safer way of traveling, next to Phase Shift.

Phase Shift: This power turns you completely intangible, unable to affect or be affected by anything in the outside world. You’re completely invulnerable for the duration of the effect, which, while a Toggle, only lasts 30 seconds before automatically turning off. Phase Shift is also on a 3 minute timer, which is excessively long but can be reduced to a minute and a half should you slot it. It also costs quite a bit, if I remember correctly. It’s more of a panic-button than anything but it guarantees that you don’t get hit, unlike PFF which makes it highly unlikely that you’ll get hit. This power is too situational for my tastes.

Fighting

Boxing/Kick: Nope. If you had to choose one, get Boxing for the shorter animation and chance to Disorient.

Tough: A toggle that gives 7.5% Resistance to Smash/Lethal. For a MM, that’s really not enough to warrant two powers and the slots necessary to make Tough easy on your blue bar. You could slot it with 3 Resistance SOs to get around 12% but it’s not worth it.

Weave: Even more useless than Tough (even Maneuvers), Weave only grants 2.5% Defense to All and it only gives it you. There is no reason to get this power unless you really want to max your (as in your personal) Defense. With 3 Defense SOs, you’d net a grand total of 4% Defense. Ugh.

Presence:

Challenge: Basically it makes an enemy attack you, the Mastermind. Since you’re the squishiest AT out there, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Provoke: This causes multiple enemies to attack you, the Mastermind. See above. There has been a crazy idea of pulling mobs with this power by Provoking them and then trying to get inside PFF. I don’t think this would work because the attack animations have begun right as the enemies react to you. If the animations have begun, the ToHit calculation has already happened and PFF was not up when that calculation was made. You’d absorb the alpha with whatever Defense you had on before PFF. The second volley would have to go through PFF but you might be dead by then! If you want to live dangerously try it out.

Intimidate: Fears a single enemy. Fear is a good status effect as it causes the enemy to cower and not attack or move, a pseudo-hold if you don’t touch them. Once you attack them, they are able to attack for one cycle then resume the Fear. Intimidate only lasts 7 seconds so you’d have to put a couple Fear Durations in it to make it effective and an Accuracy and a few Recharges are worthwhile as well. However, to get to Intimidate you have to get Challenge or Provoke, which is kind of silly for a MM, not to mention slotting this power, which by no means should be a priority.

Invoke Panic: Having never used it nor ever seen it used, my knowledge of this power is coming from multiple Hero Planners. Basically it causes Fear to everything around you but I don’t know the duration or the Accuracy of the power. It is on a 60 second time so you couldn’t spam it like I’d want to. However, like the previous power, you have to choose two Presence powers before this and none of them are all that appealing. Neither is this one. Stay away from Presence if you can help it.

Force Fields

So why pick Force Fields when there are other cool sets like Dark Miasma or Traps? You tell me! You picked it! No, Force Field has some cool possibilities with Robotics and they synergize well both aesthetically and for concept reasons. I figure if you can build super-advanced robots, making a force field is just another display of your genius.

Force Fields in the Mastermind line are unfortunately the weakest Bubbles out there. They are 60% of a Defender’s Defense and 75% of a Controller’s. However, no other CoV Archetype possesses Force Fields, so you are somewhat unique. Your Bubbles, by themselves, will keep your Bots alive longer than un-Bubbled but that’s not to say that they will flat-out keep them alive. Even maxed, your Bubbles won’t drop an even minion to the 5% ToHit basement (even a FF Defender can’t O.o). However, in your travels you will notice that Bubbling your Bots has an effect so do it as often as possible or at least before bosses or other tricky enemies.

Force Fielders (Bubblers) will also have to get used to applying and re-applying Bubbles. It’s tedious, boring, and drains your Endurance but that is what your Secondary does. Also, Teammates come before your Henchmen when it comes to Bubbling Priority. Teammates will get debt, get angry, and get frustrated if they die. This does not hold true for your Henchmen. Be a team player and things will go much more smoothly. If there is such a thing as a Bubbling Hierarchy, I would say it would go something like this:

1.) Brutes. They are going to be in the thick of it more often than any other AT and will have more attacks thrown at them. Your Bubbles deflecting anywhere from 9-24% of that (depending if you slotted your Bubbles and if they’re in Dispersion range) will help, even if that Defense doesn’t seem like much. On top of their Secondaries, Brutes will be able to last longer against the same number of foes and take less damage.

2.) Stalkers. They, too, are a Melee class and will have heavier attacks thrown at them. Be sure to Bubble them up after the Brutes. They have the misfortune of not coming close to Brute HP so they might actually *need* the Bubbles more than Brutes but they’re also more equipped at escaping hairy situations versus Brutes.

3.) Squishies (Corruptors, Dominators, other MMs) Again, the Squishies might *need* the Bubbles more than the Brutes or Stalkers (because they have no Defensive Secondary) but they are also going to be taking less damage because they’re not the ones aggro-ing everybody. Corruptors generally can heal themselves so they can handle themselves a bit better. Dominators can Mez any enemies that are causing them trouble and other MMs have their Henches and Secondary to bail them out. So it’s a toss up at who needs them the most but that’s up to you to decide.

4.) Assault Bot. He’ll be taking most of the damage for your “team” and needs the Bubbles to stay alive. You might be able to get away with Bubbling your Assault before the Squishies but if you do, hide it well

5.) Protectors. You’ll want to keep these alive for the Heals, Bubbles and Damage so they’re next on the list.

6.) Battle Drones. In the team setting, they’re expendable and while Bubbling them will help them live longer, the hassle is probably not worth the survivability.

7.) Other MM Henchmen. I rarely Bubble other Henchmen and if I do, it’s only the Tier 3s. It’s too hard to even attempt to Bubble more than 7-8 people (endurance plummets) so other Henchmen are generally not considered.

After “The Big 3” Bubbles (Deflection, Insulation, Dispersion), what you get in the FF Secondary is up to you. There are a lot of Knockback powers out there as well as a couple utility powers. The Last 3 Powers are love or hate and I personally “hate” all but one of them. However, do test them out for yourself and see if you like them.

Force Bolt Level 1

Accuracy: 85
Recharge: 4
End Cost: 6.5
Range: 80
*Knockback*

You have to take Force Bolt and that is a very good thing. Some people would skip out on this power and miss how much of a life saver it is. Force Bolt does no appreciable damage but it does have a 100% chance to Knockback in addition to an inherent Accuracy bonus. Basically, you can throw enemies around with it and because of ragdoll physics, they don’t get up very fast. With just an Accuracy in it, you can consistently hit +3s and keep Purple Bosses on their butts while your Bots cream them. Force Bolt does have less range than your Bots so just like the Pulse Rifle attacks, you’ll be in front of them should you wish to Force Bolt from max range. Also note that your Bots have a myriad of Knocback powers and will do a lot of Knockback for you. When this happens, there is a window of time where an enemy can’t be knock backed any further. So you may waste a Force Bolt here and there. You’ll use this power liberally throughout your career and I have yet to slot it but it could use the slots. An Accuracy is mandatory because you’ll want to hit with it every time. A couple optional Enhancements would be Range, so you can fire from behind your Bots, and Recharge, to make sure that Force Bolt is on its way by the time the enemy gets up. Be wary of the enemies that are Knockback resistant: Circle of Thorns Nerva Spectral Daemon Lords comes to mind, because that is your primary tool to control them.

Overall: 5-star power. Yep, your first power is a 5-star. It might not do damage but it will save you or your Bots a lot of headache by pinning down a tough enemy or knocking them away from melee range. However, understand that Knockback isn’t among the most team-friendly powers.

Deflection Shield Level 2
Recharge: 2
End Cost: 10
Duration: 240 (4 minutes)
Defense: 9% to Smash/Lethal, 9% to Melee (Positional)

Deflection Shield is the first Bubble you’ll want to get because it protects against the most common damage types in the game: Smash and Lethal. Smashing damage usually comes in the form of Melee attacks (and can hit quite hard) while Lethal damage usually comes at you from bullets, swords or other sharp objects from range. The Positional defense you get from Deflection is actually better because it gives 9% Defense against All Melee attacks, meaning that it doesn’t have to be Smash/Lethal but could be Energy, Fire, etc. and you’ll still be protected because of this Positional Defense.

Bubbling is something you’ll get used to but be warned: because of the quick recharge of the power, you can drain yourself quite quickly if you Bubble non-stop for awhile. Also, as mentioned above, have a mindset of who needs Bubbling first so that your Bubbles get maximum use.

Slotting Deflection Shield is a no-brainer: 3 Defense Buffs and an Endurance Reducer. With 3 Defense Buffs, you’ll get 14% Defense. After going 34 levels without an Endurance Reducer in Deflection/Insulation, I highly recommend you slot for Endurance Redux before Defense. Being able to Bubble your whole team (or all your Bots) without dropping toggles is the way to go. I’d also recommend slotting Deflection/Insulation early while enhancements have little effect on overall gameplay. Training Enhancements do very little so slotting up Bubbles should come early so that you don’t have to later (when more tempting powers come up). Just get the slotting out of the way early and you’ll thank me later.

Overall: 5-star power. It’s one of the Big 3 and you’ll use it a lot. The Defense it provides isn’t stellar but it’s better than nothing. Slot it early and use it often to help curb the incoming damage.

Insulation Shield Level 4

Recharge: 2
End Cost: 10
Duration: 240 (4 minutes)
Defense: 9% to Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative, 9% Range (Positional)

Just like Deflection, Insulation protects against specific types of damage in addition to Positional damage. Between those two Bubbles, you’ve protected your team against everything but Psionic damage.

Bubbling an individual with Deflection/Insulation drains you quickly, so like Deflection, put an Endurance Reducer in it ASAP. Also, just like Deflection, slotting it is easy: 3 Defense Buffs and the aforementioned Endurance Redux and you’ll have 14% Defense to the types listed.

Overall: 5-star power. The 2nd of the Big 3 and worth getting early and slotting early because there’s little to take at level 4 anyway. You could push this one back a little later since the damage types it protects against are a little less common but I say get early and get it out of the way.

Detention Field Level 10

Accuracy: 85
Recharge: 60
Duration: 45
End Cost: 13
*Phase*

Detention Field is also in the love/hate relationship (I know it’s getting old but it’s the best way to put it) because it’s great solo and in small teams but a lot of teammates hate it in large group settings.

What Detention Field does is takes an enemy completely out of the picture, much like Phase Shift. The enemy cannot affect you nor can you or your team affect it. They just float there (or run around if they have Immobilization protection) until the duration runs out. This can be really useful against a target that you want to handle later (like a Boss) while mopping up another mob. It also can be used on really tough guys like Heroes, AVs, and Monsters.

I found it to be useful, when I had it, but I think the Duration is almost too long. Also you have to tell your teammates not to waste endurance attacking the Bubbled enemy. If you like it, I’d slot for Accuracy (1) and a couple Recharges.

Overall: 3-star power. It can be useful at times and can save you if things go down the tubes. However, because teammates dislike it and sometimes you have to wait around for it to wear off, it can slow you down. It’s a toss up so try it sometime and see if you like it.

Personal Force Field

Recharge: 15
End Cost: 0.33 End/sec (Toggle)
Activation Time: 2
Defense: 75% to All Damage Types and Positions
Resists: 56% to All
*Unable to Affect Others*

Personal Force Field is actually one of the gems of the set because you can “hide” behind it while your Bots keep attacking. This comes at a cost, however. While under PFF, Supremacy and any other Buffing Toggles (Leadership, Dispersion Bubble, etc.) don’t affect outside allies (team or Henchmen). However, they still cost endurance and will continue to drain you, because technically, they’re still affecting you. What this means is that your Bots will be less effective while you are under PFF but you can still control them regularly.

PFF’s Defense is so high that you probably won’t get hit from even +6s and 7s. I’ve been able to stand in the middle of level 40s (while I was level 34) without getting touched. So, while you’re in PFF, you’re virtually untouchable.

This leads to a couple of interesting strategies. First, it’s the Panic Button. Crap hits the fan and the team starts to wipe, your Bots start dying and you’re next so you hit PFF and walk out of the situation nearly unscathed. You can heal yourself while under PFF so if you have Aid Self, you can use it to regain HP while remaining unharmed. Seconds, it’s great to absorb the Alpha Strike of a large group. Since only 1 out of 20 attacks will hit you, you could walk up to a mob of 15 and let them all fire and you have a good chance of not getting hit at all. Even a Brute can’t claim that. You can also survive the big hits from AVs or Giant Monsters because they’ll rarely hit you either. However, you won’t exactly keep their attention if you wander off because while your presence makes them attack you, it doesn’t generate enough aggro for them to follow.

I find that I don’t need to slot PFF because like I said, even +6s don’t touch me. In PvP you would want to slot for Defense and if you want it to come up faster (15 seconds is a long time) slot for Recharge. I personally have it slotted for 1 Defense just so I know I’m capped against Bosses that +4 and 5 ahead of me.

Overall: 5-star power. Once you get it, dying should be a thing of the past. You can raise PFF and walk out when the rest of your team wipes. Just realize that your Buffs are helping no one but yourself.

Dispersion Bubble Level 20

Recharge: 15
End Cost: 0.67 End/sec
Range: 25 Feet
Defense: 6% to All, 6% to AoE (Positional)
*Hold/Disorient/Immobilize Protection*

Dispersion Bubble is the last of the “Big 3” Bubbles of Defense and is the cornerstone of the Force Field set. When you activate this power, a big ‘ole Bubble goes out 25 feet in every direction (and about 15 feet above/below you) and everyone inside it gets the Buffs it provides. The Defense is quite low but because it is Defense to All, it always helps. The main reason to have it, however, is for the Mez protection that, generally, Squishies don’t have. It’s low resistance, Mag 2 or 3 I believe, but it will save you from the stray Hold or Immobilize that will get cast on you or your Henchmen/Team. Keeping everyone in the Bubble is hard considering the size and breadth of many maps and while the Bubble seems large from the outside, it’s actually pretty small when you try to get all your team in it.

It is a bit of an Endurance hog and slotting for Endurance Reduction is prudent. If you’re trying to keep Stamina out of your build, three slot for Endurance because this is going to be running everywhere you go. At 0.67 End/sec, it’s not a monster but with Endurance SOs in it, it can be dropped to a very manageable 0.35 or so. See Appendix B for Toggle numbers.

Three Defense SOs are also mandatory, even if you only get 1% more Defense per SO. Dispersion will be running almost all the time so you might as well squeeze out as much Defense as you can. Fully slotted with Defense SOs, you get 9.6% Defense to All. Add to this the Deflection/Insulation, and you can walk away with 24% Defense to All. On top of that, your Protectors may be able to add another 7% with their Bubbles for a grand total of 31% Defense to all. That’s really not too shabby.

Overall: 5-star power. You’ll want this ASAP as it gives Mez protection and the Defense to All doesn’t hurt. Once slotted, it’s easy on the Endurance and you’ll see a lot of benefit as long as you keep your allies within it.

Repulsion Field Level 28

Recharge: 20
Range: 7 (just outside of Melee)
Cost: 1.03 End/sec + Additional End per Foes in range
*Knockback*

Repulsion Field sounds really good on paper: it keeps high damage Melee targets from getting to you by throwing them back violently if they enter the field. I’ve experimented with this power and tried to get a feel for it but never could because the range on it is so small. I had to be practically on top of enemies for it to knock them back. It also is a Endurance hog. This one takes more than half of your Endurance away, unslotted, and even with an Endurance Reducer in it, I can’t run Dispersion, Assault and Tactics. Stamina pretty much is required if you want to permanently run Repulsion Field and that’s unfortunate.

The cost of the power aside, it still doesn’t appeal to me because I can throw most enemies away with Force Bolt or my Bots will do it for me with their combination of Knockback powers. The enemies that I can’t knockback, because of KB resistance, aren’t even affected by Repulsion Field, so it doesn’t help me at all.

Now, in PvP, Repulsion Field has a chance to stop an Invisible Stalker from cleaning your clock but it doesn’t always work and like I said, the enemies have to be in Melee range for the power to work anyway. If it had greater range, it’d be more worthwhile.

I will say it does look pretty cool, especially the activation animation. After that you just pulse, which is also cool in its own right. I believe Repulsion Field has a small chance to De-Toggle as well, which is another reason to get it for PvP.

If you get it, I’d slot it with 3 Endurance Reducers and nothing else. I’d use it to pin enemies against a wall and knock them up in a corner, unable to retaliate. This tactic might not be so great with multiple foes because it drains you for every foe repelled (although the endurance/foe has been reduced).

Overall: 2-star power. Some people may like the extra cushion it gives them but Force Bubble, at 38, does all that and more. PvP players may want it for the de-toggle and the Knockback against melee. Experiment with it and make your own judgments.

Repulsion Bomb Level 35

Accuracy: 83
Recharge: 30 Seconds
Range: 70
End Cost: 13
*Knockback*
*Disorient*

Repulsion bomb was changed from a “Targeted Ally” to any enemy and I have yet to play with the new version. The Recharge was also increased to 30 seconds, from 10 seconds, and the chance to Disorient was reduced by 60%. It also has the ability to De-Toggle in PvP, which remained unchanged. Also, the cost and range of the power, as far as I know, has not changed but I could be wrong.

The new Repulsion Bomb can be used Solo, but for a MM, it could already be used Solo by targeting a Henchmen. The change makes it less powerful but it still has some use. Think of it as a AoE Force Bolt, except on a 30 second timer. It will launch enemies away from you (not where the bomb hits) and has a (now) small chance to Disorient. I want to say that it used to have a high chance to Disorient so the -60% effectiveness may leave it at somewhere around 30-40%, but I can’t be sure.

The major downfall of the power is its activation time. Yeah, it looks cool to lob the giant ball of force but if you’re trying to get attackers off an ally, it takes too long to really help. Also, the new Recharge really kills it because it’s so situational now. 3 Recharges will bring it down to roughly 15 seconds but you used to be able to fire it off almost as fast as Force Bolt (especially back in the Perma-Hasten days).

If you want to use it, slot an Accuracy and 3 Recharge in it so that it is up as often as possible and so you can reliably hit with it. It has an Accuracy bonus already so the one SO should be enough.

Overall: 2-star power. Before the change, it would have gotten 3 stars because as a MM, you could control where it went, had a good chance to Disorient, and came up quickly. Now, it’s more situational and more of a PvP thing. As always, try it out for yourself to see if you want to use it.

Force Bubble Level 38

Recharge: 15
End Cost: 0.39 End/Sec
Range: 50 feet
*Repel*
*Knockdown*

This is the last Force Field power you get and it’s a biggie. As in, it’s huge! Force Bubble is twice the size of Dispersion and is really easy to spot. Its size can be its undoing, but we’ll get to that in a bit. What it does is pushes (but not violently) enemies out toward the rim of the Bubble, keeping them from Melee range. This helps immensely against foes with hard hitting close-range attacks that would tear your Tier 1s (or you) apart. Since it pushes them out to around 50 feet, they’re prime targets for your Bots’ attacks and they can attack without fear of getting smashed in the face. The Repel effect is strongest right next to you and weaker toward the edges so a few enemies might get a few feet in before being pushed out. Knockback resistant enemies will walk right through it, however, as will tough enemies like AVs and Monsters. Force Bubble has a small chance to knockdown foes in its field but it isn’t often enough to depend on and although the power description says that enemy ranged attacks lose accuracy, the –Acc effect hasn’t been clearly measured, if it’s there at all. Some say it was removed in Beta and I can’t confirm or deny it.

The problem with this power is actually the size of the field. Foes inside the Force Bubble will aggro to you and if you move around carelessly, you might aggro a group of mobs that you didn’t even see. Because of this extra attention, you might find yourself taking way too many hits because of Force Bubble and decide to drop it.

There are some interesting strategies concerning this Big Bubble and most of them revolve around pushing a bunch of enemies against a wall and clumping them up so your Bots’ AoE attacks can rip them apart.

Because the power isn’t remotely as expensive as it used to be, Stamina is not required to maintain it. In fact, it’s less than the Leadership toggles and about as half as much as Dispersion. A Endurance Reduction (or two) should be plenty in this power to run it indefinitely but you may find that it’s more of a nuisance than anything. Try it out before you buy it.

Overall: 4-star power. It can be really useful or very dangerous depending on how you use it but Force Bubble can save your Henchmen and teammates from the really damaging Melee attacks that a lot of foes have. If you can get used to its size, I think you’ll be alright.

Purpose

Robotics/Force Field is one of the more synergized sets because the Primary has Bubbles as well. Robotics has an excellent array of ranged energy blasts in addition to a huge assortment of Area of Effect attacks with the level 32 Upgrade. Force Field, on the other hand, gives reasonable (but not stellar) damage mitigation with its +Defense but also good Mez protection with Dispersion Bubble, but best of all you get Personal Force Field that gives the Mastermind excellent protection while still using their Bots. Of course, there are downsides with this combination: no way to heal damage, no boost to damage and the need to Bubble everything, which is time consuming, tedious, and endurance intensive. However, it is a great set to play as and there are many ways to succeed as a Bots/FF MM.

I rate all powers on the 5-Star system. 5 stars means it’s a cornerstone power that you’d be insane to pass up while a 1-star means that you should probably avoid it like the plague. Not too many powers get the dreaded 1-star because most powers have some redeeming quality. Everything in between is your call. I hope to remain as objective as possible. Also, the Star system is not relative. That is, there is not just 1 5-star power and the rest are compared to that.

A couple notes, before we get started:

All Masterminds have an inherent power called Supremacy. This power gives henchmen within a 30-40 foot radius a boost in Damage and Accuracy. While the damage boost is easily measured (+25%), the Accuracy boost is still a bit of a mystery. For many, the assumption is that the Damage and Accuracy boosts are the same, making Supremacy a 25% boost to both Accuracy and Damage. Supremacy does have a line-of-sight requirement so if an obstacle such as a box or crate gets between you and your Bots, they will lose this power. Going around a corner has the same effect. Once you get into the higher levels, Supremacy will a play large role in the Accuracy of your lower Henchmen because they will be a lower level than you are and they need all the Accuracy they can get. Also note that Invisibility, Personal Force Field, Phase Shift, and a few other powers (but not Stealth or a buff like Grant Invisibility) will turn off Supremacy.

Here is a quick chart for when you get your various Henchmen.

Level 1: First Battle Drone (Tier 1, +0 levels)
Level 6: Second Battle Drone (Tier 1, -1 level)
Level 12: First Protector Bot (Tier 2, +0 levels)
Level 18: Third Battle Drone (Tier 1, -2 levels)
Level 24: Second Protector Bot (Tier 2, -1 level)
Level 26: Assault Bot (Tier 3, +0 level)

All told, you will have 3 Battle Drones (-2 to you), 2 Protector Bots (-1 to you) and an Assault Bot (same level as you).

Robotics

Pulse Rifle Blast Level 1
Accuracy: 75
Brawl Index: 2.778 (Energy)
Recharge: 4 seconds
Endurance Cost: 6.5
Range: 80

The first of 3 Primary attacks in the Robotics line, Blast does little damage but recharges quickly and is a boon to the starting player who only has one Battle Drone running around and wants to increase their damage. While the power actually does more damage/second than Pulse Rifle Burst, it will drain more endurance to do so and will take away from managing your Henchmen. Ultimately, the damage of this power will pale in comparison to the damage output of your Henchmen and unless you really want to have a little measure of offense yourself, it becomes obsolete. Combined with the other 2 Primary Blasts, however, you can dish out some pain, though it would still be lacking compared to your Bots or other Archetypes. Early going, it works well and you’ll prolly suffer without some form of attack but if you get the chance to Respec, this will be among the first to go. If you plan to slot it, 1 Acc and 3 Damage are plenty but a Range might good too. All the Rifle attacks have a shorter range than your Bots attacks so that puts you in front of them in order to get your shot off. For the most part, you want your bots between you and the enemy, not behind you.

Overall: 2-star Power. Leaves a bit to be desired but it does help you through those early stages where you don’t have much firepower to begin with. Fast recharge but little bite, either combine it with other Pulse Rifle blasts or respec out of it.

Battle Drones Level 1

Accuracy: 75 (drops in level will affect this)
Recharge: 90 seconds
End Cost: 19.5
Range: 90
Inherent: Laser Burst (3 “ticks” of energy damage), Melee Smash (smashing damage)
Equipped: Heavy Laser Burst (Energy and Smashing damage)
Upgraded: Full Auto Laser (Cone, 17 “ticks” of Energy damage)
Inherent Resistance: 28 to Lethal/Cold, 48 to Psionic. Disorient/Fear/Sleep
*Note* Drones have Super Leap
*Knockback*

Battle Drones are your Tier 1 Bots that will serve you well from level 1-50. At first, it will be your sole companion as you level up but at level 6 you’ll get two and you’ll also probably get the Equip Power. Their Super Jump is really handy early on, as they can attack enemies on rooftops and high platforms without your needing to be there. They’re damage is lackluster and their HP is low but when you finally get three of them all attacking the same target, they can handle themselves fairly well. Their melee attack does more damage than their Inherent laser burst so you might want to Go To command them into melee when they are all you have. This works early when enemies don’t hit hard and your Drones are still near your level. Once Equipped, they have a pseudo-attack chain that will be fairly consistent with their damage. The Heavy Laser Burst does roughly twice as much damage as the Inherent Laser Burst but takes awhile to charge and fire, kind of like a Snipe. From 6-32, these three attacks is all your Battle Drones will get and it’s a long road but well worth the travel. At 32, Drones get Full Auto Laser with the Upgrade and while it seems like a really cool power on paper, unless all three Bots fire their Full Autos at the same time, the damage is really poor. The animation time for the power is also really long and the Drones could probably fire off two rounds of their other Lasers in the same time (which would do a lot more damage than the Full Auto). However, because it’s Area of Effect, you might get 3-4 enemies in range and that’s when it adds up. 3 Full Autos all firing at once is quite cool. Also, it makes sure that your Drones always have something to do because by the time Full Auto is done, the other two blasts have recharged.

Drones get into trouble later on when they start dropping in levels and by level 18, since they’re -2 to you, they’ll be fighting +2-+5, depending on what you (as the MM) are fighting. Because of this, they’re damage is going to be lacking, as is their Accuracy. See Appendix A for Accuracy tables. The moral of the story is that you really can’t have too much Accuracy for these little guys. If you’re fighting +2s or higher, 3 Accuracy is necessary for them to hit at a “capped” level (which is what you always want). As for Damage, that’s all these guys do so also slot up as much damage as you can. 3 Acc/3 Damage is the way to go and unless you want to skip out on of the Accuracies, 6-slot this power as fast as possible because you’ll use it your entire career.

One last thing, Drones will run into melee range on occasion (more often than I’d like) and if you don’t keep a tight reign on your Drones, they’ll get themselves killed. The Numpad Bind Pad is what I use and I can just tell all my Drones to Go To if one decides to be heroic. Drones’ health are also the most “roller-coaster” like in that they can go from Green to Red (or Dead) in one hit. Bosses are Drone Killers and will happily chew through your Tier 1s unless you Bubble them or make sure something else draws aggro.
I highly suggest Aid Other and it will save your Drones numerous times. Protector Bot Heals will also repair a large amount of health to your Drones unslotted. Just don’t’ rely on them to save Drones because the heals are infrequent.

Overall: 5-Star Power. As one of your Henchmen, it’s a no-brainer to pick this power up at level 1. While Battle Drones aren’t as powerful as Protectors or the Assault Bot, they still will do their part. Tactics will keep them alive more than anything so read the Tactics section after viewing the rest of the Powers.

Pulse Rifle Burst Level 2

Accuracy: 75
BI: 4.66 (Energy)
Recharge: 8
End Cost: 10.66
Range: 80
*Knockback*

This is another direct attack, and in my opinion, the best of the three. While its reload and animation are slow, the damage is superior to anything your Bots will do for quite some time (even when the Burst is unslottted). It has a chance (it has to be somewhere in the region of 10-20%) to Knockback, which synergizes well with Force Bolt, the first power you get in the Force Field Secondary. However, like the Rifle Blast, the range is less than your Bots so you might want to compensate with a Range Enhancer. Damage on this is actually decent if you slot it up and will do about as much damage as your Assault Bot’s heaviest hitters. It’s a great way to supplement your Bot’s damage, especially if you want them to move to a new target while you finish off the last slivers of health. If there was one of the Primary Rifle attacks to keep, I’d say this is it. The Rifle Blast, some would argue, has a higher DPS than this but in order to achieve that higher DPS, you have to spam the Blast instead of controlling your Henchmen. In addition, because Rifle Burst takes 8 seconds to recharge (base) you don’t have worry as much about how much endurance it costs. In 8 seconds, you’ll regain the endurance (barring heavy toggle use).

Overall: 3-star power. Of the Primary Rifles, it is the best but that’s not saying a whole lot. I Respec’d out of it at 26 because I really wasn’t using it that much and didn’t want to invest the slots. It will help early to gain the first 10 levels while your Bots are still few and still don’t do a lot of damage. I find that I don’t need the personal attack to keep safe because I have Force Bolt around to keep enemies off me but you could be different.

Equip Robot Level 6

Recharge: 6 Seconds (2 second activation time, 8 seconds total)
End Cost: 16.5
Battle Drones: Heavy Laser Burst
Protector Bots: Heal Beam, Heavy Laser Burst
Assault Bot: Dual Plasma Cannon, Flamethrower

Equip is one of the first powers that you’ll have a love/hate relationship with. You’ll love that it gives your Bots new powers but will hate going through and Equipping them all. It is among the most tedious things in the game and until it changes, it is the price you pay for having Endurance-Free damage and meat shields at your disposal. Equipping will have to be done every time you zone or enter a mission (just like summoning) but will be permanently on the Bot until it dies or you leave it. The recharge is the same as the animation time and the Bot being equipped will be unable to take action until the animation time is up. Doing this mid-battle isn’t bad as long as you’re willing to put that Bot into a vulnerable state.

When you get all 6 Bots, Equipping (unenhanced) will take at least 40 seconds so just realize this when you’re on a team. That’s the reason I said the recharge was 8 seconds: because in actuality, you’ll spend an additional 12 seconds in animation time over the course of 6 Bots, just so you know. All the other Archetypes will be able to rock and roll at the start so understand that you’ll be slowing them down at the beginning. Also, Summoning and Equipping all 6 Bots will literally drain you completely from 100 Endurance to nothing if you go as fast as you can. I highly recommend an Endurance Reduction in the default slot. If you do that, you’ll have around 1/3 of your Endurance left after the initial summon and Equip. I also don’t recommend slotting this power. The base slot with an Endurance is more than sufficient and you’ll find that once you hit your level 32 Upgrade, slowing down the initial summon/equip cycle will be to your benefit since you’ll be able to Upgrade at least 2 Bots by the time all the Equipping is done.

Overall: 5-star power. You really can’t get by without it and while it is a necessary evil to Equip all your Bots, it makes them considerably better. Plus, it only takes 1 slot to be effective, which is a plus any day.

Photon Grenade Level 8

Accuracy: 75
Brawl Index: 1.777 (1.222 Energy, .555 Smashing)
Recharge: 16
End Cost: 19
Range: 80
*Disorient*

Unfortunately, this power is not as effective as its graphics. It’s really cool looking but it’s deceptive because this a high-endurance, low-damage power that really isn’t effective at all. Yeah, it does AoE but the tiny damage it does is not worth the Endurance. Also, the chance to Disorient is kind of cool but it is only Mag 2 (Minions only) and has a short duration. This is the worst of the 3 Rifle powers, which is a shame because it looks so darn cool. Stay away from this power unless you pick up the previous two Rifle attacks because on its own, it is a waste of Endurance and brings nothing to the table that your Bots couldn’t do 10 times better. If you do decide to get it, slot it with Accuracy, Recharge, and Endurance Reducer and Disorients. The damage is not worth enhancing but the Disorient is. 1 Acc/2 Recharge/1 End Redux/2 Disorient is the way I’d slot it so that you could maximize the Disorient and get it up as often as possible while also not severely impacting your Endurance. However, this is a power not worth 6-slots so if you only had 3 slots to play with, I’d go with an Accuracy, a Recharge, and a Disorient. Don’t worry though, this power comes back at 32 when your Protector Bots get it. Not only is it more powerful on them but it doesn’t cost you Endurance and they can stack their Disorients. I guess you could try to time your Photon Grenade with the two from your Protectors (alpha strikes maybe) but that’s going to be few and far between. I say skip this power.

Overall: 1-star. It’s a shame this isn’t a more useful power but unfortunately it is. Low damage for high cost and only a decent chance to Disorient is simply not worth it, in addition to the extra aggro it generates to you.

Protector Bots Level 12
Accuracy: 75 (drops in level will affect this)
Recharge: 90 seconds
End Cost: 19.5
Range: 90
Inherent: Laser Burst (Energy), Force Shield (3.5% Defense to All)
Equip: Heavy Laser Burst (Energy), Heal Beam (33%? of Protector’s Health)
Upgrade: Photon Grenade (see above), Seeker Drones (-Acc, -Dam, Disorient)
*Disorient*
*Knockback*

Inherent Resistance: 28 to Lethal/Cold, 48 to Psionic. Disorient/Fear/Sleep
The moment you hit level 12, you start to see why you picked Robotics. Protector Bots aren’t the melee monsters that Necromancy or Ninjas get but they are far more powerful than their Battle Drone brethren. Your damage output will double at level 12 and, if you took Equip, you get a mini-Healer that will help keep your Drones alive.

Protectors have a lot of slotting options and when you get the Upgrade at 32, those options become much, much more tempting but the fact of the matter is this: Protector Bots are Combat Medics, not Healers/Defenders. What I mean by this is that a Protector’s primary function is dealing damage, not mitigating it. The Bubbles and Healing is welcome and necessary but they are not the Protector’s primary role, even though the name seems to imply it. During battles, Protectors will fire their guns 95% of the time, stopping only to reposition or Heal occasionally. For that reason, I cannot stress it enough, slot for Accuracy and Damage. The Disorients, the Heals and the Defense are great but not boosting what a Protector does 90% of the time seems a bit foolish to me.

That being said, I’m in the camp that says maximize the damage of your Protectors by slotting 2 Accuracies and 3 Damage and at 32, put an Endurance Reduction in them so that they don’t run dry during long (or repeated) battles. I wish I had more than 6 Slots for these guys because the other Enhancements would really help, but I have to be reasonable and realize that these Bots are first and foremost damage dealers.

With that out of the way, I’ll focus on what Protectors will and will not do. They will heal sizeable chunks of a Battle Drone’s health (close to half), less to another Protector (1/3), and even less to the Assault Bot (1/4 maybe), unenhanced. Up until 32, I suggest placing a Heal in the 6th slot of your Protectors (if you’ve slotted them up that much by then) because it will help your Assault and other Protectors. After 32, however, the Endurance Reduction is needed because with all the Photon Grenades, Bubbling, and Seeker Drones (which Protectors will Bubble for some reason), your Protectors will run dry on Endurance. They also will Bubble all your Henchmen and you (but they will not stack Bubbles on you personally) in addition to other Mastermind’s Henchmen. They don’t seem to have an order to their Bubbling, besides starting to whomever is closest. The Bubbles last 4 minutes, like Force Field Bubbles and give roughly 3.5% Defense to all. Stacked, that’s 7% of free Defense.

What Protectors will not do is save your Bots by themselves. At 18, you have 3 Battle Drones and only 1 Protector. Levels 18-24 are tough because that one Protector has a hard time managing 3, -2 minions that generate a lot of aggro. At 24, however, you get your second Protector and life becomes a lot easier. Not only do you get more damage but the second Protector can Heal the first and vice versa. The stacking Bubbles help as well in addition to another target with more HP then your Drones. Even with 2 Protectors, however, your Drones will get in over their heads and die without supervision.

When the Assault Bot comes at 26, Protectors take a backseat because the Assault is your lifeline. It becomes the Primary damage dealer of your forces and the Primary tank so you’ll focus on keeping it alive. In team settings, some people don’t summon their Battle Drones a.) because it causes more lag and pathing problems and b.) so their Protectors can focus on healing the Assault Bot. This isn’t a bad idea for large teams so think about next time you’re on a big team or on a team with more than 1 Mastermind.

At 32, Protectors become do-it-alls. They have Area of Effect Damage, Single Target Damage, Damage Mitigation, and can Mez enemies. They Disorient quite a bit with their Photon Grenades and Seeker Drones and also do their fair share of damage. Seeker Drones have a chance to Disorient as well while their Debuffs are also quite excellent. I don’t know how much –Acc and –Dam they have but since you get two per Protector, it’s possible to have 4 Seekers explode on one target, quadrupling the effects of the Debuffs. Seekers are kind of dumb though and the Protectors have to be close to the enemies to summon and use them. They also Bubble the Seekers, as mentioned before, which is annoying and silly considering the Seekers are suicide bombers. Seekers do a little damage to the area in which they explode but that’s not their primary purpose. If you can help it, try to get all 4 to hit a Boss to hopefully Disorient and definitely debuff them.

If you go against my advice and slot for Defense, Disorient, or Heal, I recommend at least two Accuracy SOs in any Protector Build. 3 Defense SOs will up the Bubble’s Defense from 3.5 to about 5% and the Double Bubble nets about 10%. I find that three slots into Defense for only 3% net gain is kind of silly but that’s just me. Slotting for Disorient or Heal is the better option once you hit 32 because they will noticeably affect your gameplay. A single Disorient SO will make the Disorients quite a bit longer although they aren’t terribly long to begin with. Finally, you will see an obvious increase in Heal strength with Heal SOs but even with two Heals in them, they won’t be able to fully heal even another Protector, let alone an Assault Bot.

Overall: 5-star power. Extremely versatile and always needed/wanted, Protectors are your bread and butter. Treat them well and they will treat you well. Know their limits and you’ll do fine.

Repair Level 18

Recharge: 120
End Cost: 10
Range: 60

This is another let-down power that should be better then what it is. Repair is useful, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that it doesn’t come up enough to be worth the power pick or the slots. Repair, when activated, sends out 3 of these little disk-like blue swirly things on the ground that go out to the Bot you have selected and refills all of their HP and Endurance. It has good range, too, but the further you get away from your Bots, the further the little swirly disks have to go and if your Bots are on the verge of death, they might not make in time. This is an addition to the 2 second activation time this power has (it’s the same animation as summoning your Bots). Because of the delay between activating the power and the actual Heal going off, you may have to preemptively use the power on a Bot in the yellow and hope the nano-bots get there in time. Because it is on a two minute timer, Repair is not a “every fight” power but rather an escape button when a Bot is very close to death and you need to have everything fighting. Because the Assault Bot has a lot more HP then the other two Tiers, Repair’s usefulness is maximized when healing the Assault from little to Full. The Endurance aspect of this power is almost entirely wasted because the only Bots that ever start running low on Endurance are Protectors and that’s only if you have the level 32 Upgrade and make them fight non-stop for about 2 minutes. But, with one Endurance Reduction in them, they never come close to bottoming out so I guess the only time the Endurance boost from this power could be used is when there are Sapping enemies like Carnies or in PvP.

Three Recharges in this power will drop it to about a minute, which is still far too long to be your only Heal for your Bots. Even with Protector Heals, Repair needs help when it comes to keeping all of your Bots on their feet. I say take Aid Other early and let Repair supplement its Healing for the times where you’re under attack (Aid Other is interruptible) or when your Assault is going down and you need to repair to full (which Aid Other will never be able to do in one application).

Overall: 2-star power. Its recharge is simply too long to be your primary heal power but in conjunction with Aid Other, it can bail you out of hairy situations. If you had to pick one, Aid Other is the better Heal by far and you can do just fine without Repair. I know, because I Respec’d out of Repair into Aid Other and haven’t looked back.

Assault Bot Level 26

Accuracy: 75 (won’t change! *gasp*)
Recharge: 90
End Cost: 19.5
Range: 90
Inherent: Plasma Blast (Energy), Smash (Smashing)
Equip: Dual Plasma Blast (Energy DoT, AoE around target), Flamethrower (Cone DoT)
Upgrade: Swarm Missiles (AoE, DoT), Incendiary Missiles (AoE, Ignites ground, DoT)
Inherent Resistance: 28 to Lethal/Cold, 48 to Psionic. Disorient/Fear/Sleep
*Disorient*
*Knocback*

After 26 Levels of sub par damage compared to other Masterminds and other Archetypes, you get your Tier 3 Bot and he totally kicks butt. Towering over the Drones and Protectors, the Assault Bot is quite a sight to behold when you first get him and is even more impressive when you first see him in action. The Assault Bot has more HP than you (as the MM) do and this is to your advantage because you can send him ahead to scout around corners and blind spots. He also has natural Bot resistances meaning he’d survive an encounter better than you, as well.

In action, with just Equip, the Assault likes to use his Flamethrower. This is not actually a good thing because while it is a AoE Cone, it doesn’t do a lot of damage and it does it over time to boot. What’s worse is that is has a really long animation time and in that time the Assault could have fired off two Plasma Blasts and a Dual Plasma Blast. These two attacks are quite solid. Plasma Blast is direct energy damage that just hits hard and that’s it. It’s up every few seconds and has good range (and looks cool too). There is also some PvP tests that show it stopping Regeneration, which is incredible if it is true. Stopping the regen of high HP targets is paramount if you want to defeat them because often times their Regen is higher than your DPS. The Dual Plasma Blast is by far the coolest looking attack the Assault has and is also the most powerful. It has an initial hit of Energy damage that is meaningful but not great which also hits any/all enemies standing right next to the primary target. Next, the blast has Damage over Time for about 7 “ticks” to the primary target and these add to the damage. Finally, the Assault Bot has a melee Smash that does pretty good damage (just under Dual Plasma Blast damage) and also has a chance to Disorient. However, once in melee range, that’s the only attack he’ll use so not only will he wait on the Smash attack to recharge, he won’t hit anyone else either. Get him out of Melee as much as possible because his DPS will suffer if you don’t not to mention he won’t be able to use any of his AoE attacks later on.

With the level 32 Upgrade, you’ll find that your Assault Bot out-damages your other 5 combined. The AoE missiles are too freakin’ sweet and you’ll wish they fired them more often. I personally can’t tell the missiles apart (as they fire) but once they hit, it’s obvious which is which. Swarm Missiles explode and do DoT to a large area around the target. It’s not uncommon to hit 10 guys scattered around the main target. I haven’t counted the “ticks” yet but I estimate anywhere from 7-10. Incendiary Missiles will be your favorite attack because it also has the large AoE, like Swarm Missiles, but when it hits a target, it ignites the ground beneath them, much like a Burn patch or the Ignite from Scrapyarder Lieutenants. This goes for every enemy hit so there could be a dozen Ignite patches from one volley. This does cause the mobs to scatter as they try to run from the flames and this gives you a chance to start wiping them out. The Ignite patches will stop once the enemy that started it dies but if you have multiple patches up, all enemies will be hurt by the flames if they are knocked into it. Ignite patches have the same duration as the Incendiary missiles have Recharge so you could perma-Ignite a particular boss or high HP target.

Also with the level 32 Upgrade, you’ll find that you’ll want to hold off on mopping the floor with enemies until they’re all nice and clumped up. It makes the light show so much more impressive! It also kills them faster. If all your Bots have the Upgrade, 5-6 minions will fall in seconds if they’re grouped up and your Bots use their AoEs all at once.

You will want to lead with your Assault Bot and this will get him into trouble sometimes. He will take a lot of punishment on the frontlines but at the same time a quick Aid Other or Protector Heal will usually be enough to keep him upright. Of all the Bots to lose, the Assault Bot is the easiest to replace because, generally, you rarely have to and the Summon is recharged, and because he’s so easy to get Upgraded/Equipped. There is only one of him so it’s not like you’re “wasting the power” like you would if you only lose 1 Drone. However, if you lose your Assault Bot, I’d say the battle is going downhill or you were careless. He really doesn’t get killed that often so his death might mean you’re in over your head.

Be sure to Bubble your Assault Bot first and Upgrade/Equip him first when you enter a mission. He can easily defend you while you set up your other Bots if there is an ambush at the door. He also gets the most benefit out of Upgrades and Equip because his damage output is so much higher with them (versus the meager gains on a Drone and moderate gains on the Protectors).

As for slotting, I say go with 2 Accuracy and 3 Damage and maybe a Disorient if you feel like it. I believe the Swarm Missiles have a chance to Disorient, in addition to the melee Smash, so slotting for Disorient isn’t a bad idea. One Accuracy SO might be enough for you if you don’t see yourself fighting above +2s. +3s and higher will require some added Accuracy if you want to be “capped” at the 95% To Hit ceiling. The second Accuracy SO ensures that your Assault Bot will hit almost always and also has Accuracy to spare if he gets Debuffed. Missing really sucks with some of his big attacks so I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Overall: 5-star power. I’d give it a 6th star if I could because this guy will totally change the game for you. Your damage output will finally start rivaling other ATs and you’ll be safer because you have the Big Guy taking hits for you and dishing out as well. He’s a monster when fully Upgraded.

Upgrade Robot Level 32

Recharge: 60 (2 Second Activation time, 62 Total)
End Cost: 23
Battle Drones: Full Auto Laser
Protector Bots: Photon Grenade, Seeker Drones
Assault Bot: Swarm Missiles, Incendiary Missiles

I know how I was when I was approaching 32. I was running Relentless missions with my 6 robot chums without any problem and couldn’t conceive of how much the level 32 Upgrade would really affect me. I mean, I was doing just fine, right?

Getting the level 32 Upgrade was cooler for me than getting my Assault Bot, after I saw it in action. It’s that awesome. You go from taking out single-targets pretty easily (with just Equip) to taking out a 5-6 guys simultaneously in a matter of seconds. The fireworks are amazing and all of a sudden mobs are getting disorients, things are blowing up, orange numbers are flying everywhere and when the dust settles, you see all your little Robot friends with their now-glowing eyes asking for seconds. After you get Upgrade, it’s no longer “Can I beat this guy?” it is “How many guys can I kill at once?” Just remember that when you get to your 20’s and wonder if Robotics is right for you. It gets better, my friend, just stick it out.

Upgrade is on a 60 second timer, meaning that it is definitely NOT going to be as available as Equip. You’ll have to pick and choose who gets the Upgrade because no one wants to sit around for four and half minutes and wait to Upgrade all their Bots. You don’t want to do that and neither does your team. Put 3 Recharge SOs into as fast as you can and you’ll drop it’s wait down to 30 seconds (really, it turns out to be around 33 seconds with ED and activation times).

Here’s what I do: I get in the mission and summon all three Tiers (Assault first, Protectors next, Drones last). When the Assault can be selected, I Upgrade and Equip simultaneously. When you do that, only one animation happens so the Assault Bot is ready to go a little faster. I then put Equip on Auto and click through the Battle Drones to Equip them. By the time I get to my first Protector Bot, Upgrade is ready again so I upgrade the Protector and Equip (set on Auto) follows shortly thereafter. I then Equip the last Protector, turn on my toggles (Dispersion, Assault and Tactics) and Upgrade has 9 seconds left, in which case I put that on the second Protector. It takes just over a minute after Summoning (about 70 seconds to go from nothing to All-Equipped, 3 Upgraded Bots). This is with 3 Recharges into Upgrade. With only 1, the Upgrade will be ready by the time the last Bot is being Equipped so you’ll have 2 Upgraded Bots total by the end of the Equip cycle. As you can see, I’ve got this down to a science and while I’ve thought about putting a recharge in Equip, the Upgrade cycle works out so well with the current Equip cycle that I don’t think I will. Also note that even without Stamina, this whole cycle never bottoms me out. This is because there is an Endurance Reduction in Equip and I know that without it, there’s no way I could do it.

Overall: 5-star power. Again, this deserves 6-stars because of how much it will change your gameplay. You’ll love your Bots when you get this and the AoE damage is incredibly welcome by this point in the game. Stick it out until 32 before giving up on your Bots because I assure you, they will not disappoint.

I'm definately not the guy to go to for PvP because I have rarely play it and don't have much desire to.

Dark/Dark Defenders are not typically the best Defender to PvP with because most of our strong powers can be easily sidestepped. Darkest Night barely dents Heroes or Villains (it only affects up to 80% -Acc, meanwhile a Build Up or Aim completely trumps it) and Tar Patch isn't useful against mobile targets like Players.

Fear works sometimes, which is good, but you can't perma-lock down someone with F. Stare because of the PvP rules.

Finally, we're simply too Squishy without Mez Protection. You can get by, I'm sure, but a single Hold or Disorient and we're toast.

I played in the Arena when it came out and could only beat other Defenders and Blasters. I almost beat a Tank once because I could double-stack Tar Patch and shoot him at range.

I'm simply not the expert on PvP builds so I don't try to be. PvE is where my gig is and I know it inside and out. Sorry, but I can't really help.

[ QUOTE ]
How do you recommend slotting Fluffy for a controlleresque build?

[/ QUOTE ]

You know, I don't think it's wise to slot for a "Controller-esque" build because Petrifying Gaze (on Fluffy) just isn't worth slotting compared to what Fluffy does most of the time.

However, that's not what you wanted to hear so I'll oblige your request.

Fluffy's two Controller-ish powers are Petrifying Gaze and Tentacles. If you wanted to lock down enemies longer and keep them immobilized longer, slot for Holds and Immobilize. My personal slotting suggestion would be 1 Accuracy, 2 Hold, 2 Immobilize, and 1 Heal. I added the heal because that will help everyone out: you, your Fluffy, and any teammates nearby. Fluffy should be able to perma-hold a single enemy with two Hold Durations (20 second duration and a 16 second recharge on Pet. Gaze) while the Immobilize Enhancers would increase Tentacle's immobilize in excess of of 30 seconds.

That's about as controller-ish as you can get but after seeing what a Fluffy maxed for Debuff can do, I wouldn't recommend it. Chill of the Night and Darkest Night both have massive Debuffs on them (and I believe they are equal) meaning that with 3 ToHit Debuffs, Darkest Night will be at -90% Accuracy, and so will Chill of the Night, stacking to floor most enemies. Tentacles, too, has a -Acc component that would be in the range of 10% with that kind of Enhancing. In addition, Twilight Grasp has a -Acc that would be enhanced by this slotting and it's -Acc is considerably higher than Tentacles (I believe 25%) so it would have a -50% Acc attached. So, as you can see, slotting for Debuff impacts the enemies far more than Holds or Immobilizes, even Heals.

Hope that helps.

Pool Powers

There is only one mandatory Pool to take (Fitness) but Speed is incredibly useful so I highly recommend it. Outside of those two, the sky’s the limit. I personally took Fly for concept reasons and having the vertical movement helps considerably. In all, I only took 3 pools (Stamina, Speed, and Flight) and my 4th is currently Recall Friend. Here’s my picks and reasoning behind them:

Fitness

Swift: Once incredibly useful because Shadowfall had a movement penalty, Swift is now just optional rather than encouraged.

Hurdle: Same as Swift, whichever you believe will help you more.

Health: With the new boost on Health, it’s kind of silly not to take it. It gives +40% Regen and some protection against Sleep. I take it at level 18, after Tentacles so I can get…

Stamina: …at 20 (a.k.a. ASAP). This is what makes your life as a D3 enjoyable. Without it you’ll suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Slot it up as fast as you can without neglecting your primary focus (Controlling/Debuffing). Once slotted up, you’ll be able to go from group to group with much less downtime and you’ll be able to spam attacks and control powers much better.

Speed

Hasten: Not as powerful since ED, since it can’t be made perma, Hasten is still a nice power to have to increase DPS and make longer recycling powers come up faster. 3 Slotted, it comes up about a minute after it drops which isn’t terrible but nothing compared to the old perma days.

Super Speed: Not only a nice travel power but Shadowfall + Super Speed= Invisibility. You’ll be able to stealth around missions which is very handy for finding glowies or scouting. Since I have Fly, this gets me around faster and I just turn Fly on to get over obstacles.

Medicine

General thoughts: The Medicine pool would tool your D3 to be more team-friendly and more versatile as a traditional "healer" but my interpretation of Dark Miasma is that if you're doing your job, heals should not be a huge part of gameplay. Except for Stimulent, Dark Miasma contains "better" versions of the other 3 powers. I'll explain in the detailed descriptions of the Pool powers themeselves:

Aid Other: While Twilight Grasp is an excellent heal, a targeted heal (even if it is interruptable) can be valuable should Twilight Grasp miss the target or you're not in range of your teammate. However, Twilight Grasp costs less, recharges faster and heals multiple people in range. The only thing Aid Other has that is better than Twilight Grasp is that it doesn't miss, if it doesn't get interrupted. Both powers have a drawback to them but I'd have to say Twilight Grasp is far and away the better heal power, and that's not taking into consideration the debuffs associated with it.

Stimulent: The one power that really would be useful in a team setting where squishies are involved or the Scrappers/Tanks haven't gotten their Mez resistance yet. I have little experience with this power and couldn't tell you how long the resistance lasts but even if it's only 10-15 seconds, that's incredibly helpful if you're getting mezzed all the time. Of all the powers in the Medicine Pool to take, this is the only one I'd suggest.

Aid Self: A self-heal that is interruptable. For the same reasons as I said above in Aid Other, Twilight Grasp is still the better heal. This could be good if you like to play a tank mage role and do intentionally take hits for the team. Other than that, stick with Twilight Grasp.

Resuscitate: For the same reasons the other Heals in the Medicine Pool are different but inferior to Dark Miasma's counterparts, this too is inferior in every way but one: it doesn't take an enemy nearby to use. Howling Twilight's main drawback is the reason this power shines a little brighter, but you'd have to spend 3 powers to get it and the rez itself is far worse than Howling Twilight's. Resuscitate is the same cost, same recharge as HT but the rez itself is far inferior (half hitpoints, no endurance as opposed to full for both with HT).

Overall, the pool is skippable in my opinion or if you had an extra pool and an extra power to grab, Stimulent could be worth it.

Flight

Hover: It’s nice to get away from melee attackers and be able to attack in the air. Cones are kinda funky when coming from above but you’ll figure it out. It’s a prerequisite to Fly so I took it.

Fly: Yeah it has a lot of negatives about it but as a Magic Dark/Dark Defender that is bristling with black magic, it seemed only natural to fly. Getting around in missions is especially nice and the endurance cost, once obscene, now doesn’t dent my endurance bar with Stamina. Suppression should be noted here: if you attack while flying, you’ll get reduced to base hover speed for 4 seconds. Toggles do not cause suppression though. Since ED, I found that I could actually get slots into the power and with 3 Flight SOs it’s not too shabby. Nothing compared to Super Speed but not bad either.

Group Fly: Looks cool but has no real value unless you’re in the Shadow Shard or teamed up with a lot of lowbies. It is slower than Fly but costs less and some teammates might get annoyed with it.

Leadership:

Maneuvers: Now fairly worthless, this isn’t worth the endurance to run it, let alone slot it. I’d have to check the numbers again but I want to say it’s 3.5% or something. 6% if fully slotted with Defense Buffs…a.k.a. worthless.

Assault: Defenders get about an 18% boost to base Damage or about a DO. Considering you have to take one Leadership pool power before Tactics, I suggest this. Just put an Endurance reducer in it and run it when you feel it’s worthwhile.

Tactics: Not as worthwhile as before since you can’t realistically slot 5 ToHit Buffs anymore. Also, ToHit buffs are Type B enhancements now, making them only worth 20%. If you did 3-slot with ToHit Buffs, the base 12.5% would go up to 20% +Accuracy. It’s not bad but it’s not to enough to allow you to take Accuracy SOs out of your powers.

Vengeance: Any power that requires a death to work is just not cool in my book but the buffs from this power are incredibly good and it provides mezz protection. Still “meh” but it has it’s uses I guess.

Concealment:

Stealth: Useless, Shadowfall already does it and it slows you down, which Shadowfall does not.

Grant Invisibility: Not useless but Shadowfall gives team stealth. Take it if you’re on the path to Phase Shift.

Invisibility: Since you’ll already have this in Shadowfall + Super Speed, this too is redundant but if you want to look more invisible, I’d take it on the way to Phase Shift.

Phase Shift: Since it was changed to a 30 second timed toggle, this has seriously diminished it usefulness. I don’t think it’s worth 3 power picks but some people might. It still costs a ton and has somewhere around a minute recharge (I think) and personally, the drawbacks outweigh the advantages.

Fighting:

Tough/Weave simply don’t put up the numbers like Scrappers and Tanks. Wait for the Ancillary Pools and take the Armors there because they’re much more impressive. Boxing and Kick are even more worthless to a Defender.

Teleportation

Recall Friend: Incredibly valuable as you can Teleport your Fluffy around but since he can go up elevators now, it’s not as bad as it was before. Still a team-friendly power that is useful from level 6-50.

Teleport Foe: I guess you could pull with it but I wouldn’t recommend this power as you don’t necessarily want any enemies up in yo’ grill.

Teleport: The fastest travel power when slotted correctly, this takes some getting used to and probably needs a bind to really work as well as you’d like. When I have used teleport, I bound it to my left shift button so all I have to do is hit shift and then click. It is costly when you first get it but if you want to slot it up, it’s insanely fast and will get you across large distances quickly. However, it isn’t easy to go exactly where you want to go, especially if you want to go somewhere in mid-air.

Group Teleport: Probably among the more useless powers in the game, it doesn’t have the distance of Teleport and it costs a lot for how much distance you travel. It might be useful if you have Howling Twilight and want to group rez but other than that, no use for it.

Leaping

Combat Jumping: Nice early power to have and it gives defense and immobilization protection. If you go the Super Jump route, there is no reason not to take this. It’s also dirt cheap so you can run it all the time.

Super Jump. IMO, the best Travel Power because it gives good vertical movement with great speed. Plus, it’s not that expensive to run.

Acrobatics: Some Mezz protection is better than none and knockdown can get annoying. Is it worth a toggle power? Maybe, but I don’t recommend it.

Ancillary Pools (Levels 41-49)

Ancillary pools, in my opinion, should be totally your decision and what you want to do. I know I will go with the Dark Pool for concept reasons but also because there are some cool possibilities with my current powers. Power Mastery is also a popular set because every power in it is useful and wanted. I have little experience with Psychic and Electric Mastery but since they’re much like their counterparts in the other sets, I think I can assume what they do.

Dark Mastery

Oppressive Gloom: A toggle that causes all nearby foes to become disoriented at the expense of your Hit Points (the more foes in range the more it drains you) and a very meaningless amount of endurance (something like .12 end/sec). Oppressive Gloom is kind of worth something as an added control feature. If you stack it with Howling Twilight and Dark Pit, you should be able to disorient Bosses but since Howling Twilight comes up so infrequently, you’re best to stick with Dark Pit + Oppressive Gloom to take out Lts. It looks cool too!

Dark Consumption: Unfortunately, this power is not like the Scrapper version. The base recharge on this power is 6 minutes and this, in my opinion, kills any usefulness it might have had. 3-Slotted brings it to 3 minutes or about every third fight. I find it a waste. If you leave it at its base slot and slot one accuracy in it, it will recharge at the exact same rate as the base recharge of your Nuke. So you could use it as an “after-nuke” power. But, because Nukes take all your endurance now, you won’t be able to use it, even if it only takes 5 endurance or some small number to use. Even though this power is very situational, it’s still “better” than Oppressive Gloom, in my opinion. I picked Oppressive Gloom out of frustration for this power and because I like to glow red.

Dark Embrace: The sweet, sweet armor I’ve been craving for so I don’t die instantly becomes available at level 44. Like most Ancillary armors, it gives good (25%) Smash/Lethal resistance but it also gives Negative and Toxic resistance as well (25%). Couple this with Shadowfall and you can put up some modest resistance numbers. The only thing that you won’t be protected against is Fire/Cold damage. Not bad for a squishy. I would suggest 1 Endurance Reducer and 3 Resist SOs which would bring you to 40% resistance to Smash/Lethal/Negative/Toxic and if you slot Shadowfall up with 3 resistance SOs then you’d have a total 40% to Smash/Lethal/Toxic 40% to Energy/Psionic and finally 80% resistance to Negative(!). Since Defenders can only get 75% resists, this isn’t doing too shabby.

Soul Drain: This is probably the reason you took Dark Mastery, if you’re like me and want to do a ton more damage. Soul Drain, like the Scrapper Secondary power, pulls the essence out of foes around you and increases your damage and accuracy, while also doing damage and debuffing them. The effect lasts 30 seconds and you get ~5% (tested at around 4.88%) more damage and accuracy to your attacks per mob that it hits. Basically, it’s a combat “Build-Up,” something we D3s don’t have it all besides Tar Patch. Since the most targets you can hit is 10, you could theoretically add 50% Damage and Accuracy to all your attacks for 30 seconds. Since you’ll want this on as much as possible, I suggest slotting it out with as many Recharge Reducers as you can. 3-slotted it comes back every minute, so once a fight. According to my HeroPlanner, it has a +20% accuracy built in so an Accuracy in it would also make it very reliable even in the red-purple range. What I’ve done, beyond the normal “use at the start of a fight and kill stuff” is to fire off a Fearsome Stare, throw down Tentacles and Tar Patch (maybe cast Darkest Night on a lieutenant in the group), run in and Soul Drain then fire off Blackstar. With Tar Patch and Soul Drain, Blackstar (3-slotted for Damage) should blow most everything away and those that survive will be seriously debuffed. Plus I have a Fluffy behind me doing mop up and watching my back.

Power Mastery

Conserve Power: This a really difficult power to pass up, even from among the other Ancillary Pools. Basically, for the 90 second duration that it is up, your endurance cost from all powers is cut in half and this translates to virtually unlimited endurance because with 3-slotted Stamina, you’ll regain faster than you lose. You can blast, debuff, hold, cast Fluffy, whatever to your hearts content and not even blink at your blue bar. This power is so good that you’d be a fool not to have it up as much as you can. 3-recharge SOs will bring it up every 300 seconds, which isn’t great but if you have Hasten, it will reduce it some.

Power Build Up: Another gem of the set, PBU not only gives you Build Up (+80% damage and +60% Accuracy) but affects all secondary functions of your powers. Heals will go up, -Accuracy debuffs will increase, Holds will hold longer, Immobilizes will last longer, etc. It’s an all-around awesome power to have. It lasts 15 seconds rather than the usual 10 for Build Up but has a 4 minute down-time rather than a 90 second one. Recharges go best here.

Temporary Invulnerability: This is just like the Tanker version except that it gives 30% to Smash/Lethal. That’s all it does. No Energy, Toxic, Fire/Cold, Negative…just Smash/Lethal. It’s still nice to have however so do take it and slot it with an endurance reducer and the rest as resists. You could get your Smash/Lethal up to 48%.

Total Focus: Much like the Blaster/Tanker version, Total Focus is an extreme damage single-target attack that also has a Mag 3 Disorient built in (will affect a boss). It does require melee range and has a long animation time but those are its only downsides. If the Brawl Index is the same for Defenders as it is for Tankers, it would be at 9.8889 (compared to a Snipe at 7.6667) base. Basically, it will be your single-target monster damage. However, I suggest taking it at 47 instead of 49 if you intend to slot it because the level 47 power can get 6-slotted while the 49 cannot. So you’ll have to choose between Temporary Invulnerability or Total Focus at level 47. However, it’s got a decent recharge on it so I’d go 1 Acc/3 Dam/2 Recharge.

Psychic Mastery

Dominate: Foe Hold plus Psi damage (in the same league as Dark Blast), this would either replace Petrifying Gaze or be used in conjunction with it to hold a boss in short order. Since it is a “Controller” Hold, it already has a +20% bonus to Accuracy but it recharges just as fast as Petrifying Gaze. For CD3s, this is awesome because you’ll do damage while holding. If you take this, I suggest one Accuracy in the initial slot or going all out and pump it full of Damage. It’s kind of an all-or-none thing.

Mass Hypnosis: This power puts a large group to Sleep, which means that anything that affects them will wake up, somewhat like the Fear effect on Fearsome Stare. Good for crowd control before a battle, this power (like other mass control powers) has a 10% accuracy penalty and will need to make up for it in an Accuracy SO. I currently have no experience with this power so I can’t even begin to say how to use it. Since all AoE Holds have been reduced, I’m out of the loop on the numbers for this power.

Mind Over Body: Like the other Ancillary Powers, this one gives Smash/Lethal/Psi resistance at 25% each. Unlike other sets, you already have Psi resistance in Shadowfall so this would increase it even more. Again, 1 Endurance Reducer/3 Resists if you can spare the slots.

Telekinesis: Another power I have no experience with. I gather that it’s an incredibly expensive toggle that is an AoE Hold.

Electric Mastery

Electric Fence: Possibly the most useless Ancillary Power for a D3, Electric Fence simply Immobilizes a single foe and does minor damage to them (with a terribly small endurance drain attached). All I can say is to skip it because it just doesn’t do anything you can’t do already. Plus the power that could be taken in its place is so much better.

Thunder Strike: One of the more impressive melee attacks from the Electric Secondary of Blasters, Thunder Strike is a superior, near-Snipe level, damage close-quarter area of effect attack that disorients the target and hits everyone around them and knocks them down. Unfortunately, like most of the heavy hitting melee attacks (Total Focus, etc.) this has a longer recharge (20 seconds) and heavy endurance usage (21.5), This also drains a fair amount of endurance although it’s nothing compared to the next power. Typical attack slotting is recommended.

Charged Armor: Much like the other Ancillary armors, Charged Armor gives you the standard 25% resistance to Smash/Lethal/Energy and since those are the most common damage types, it’s possibly the most useful of the 4 sets. Adding Shadowfall into the mix would give you some very good numbers across the board but would get you to the cap for Energy damage. This power looks pretty cool and causes you to “spark” all over and the noise of running it isn’t annoying like some of the others. Like all the armors one endurance reducer and as many resists you can spare should go into it.

Power Sink: Works much like Dark Consumption in that it draws endurance from foes around you and the more foes the more endurance, however, this one does no damage but instead actually drains endurance from enemies. It naturally drains about 75% of the endurance from even level foes and you can fill up from about 3 mobs. It also appears to be an auto-hit because it doesn’t take accuracy enhancements. I’ve never seen it miss so, I think it has very high accuracy (like Burn) or auto-hits. This power only has a 60 second recharge and 3 Recharge SOs would drop it to 30. Hasten would just be gracy. Endurance enhancements are also great so if you feel like 6-slotting it, plug 3 Endurance enhancements in here and you’ll get more bang for your buck.

Miscellaneous

Tips

- Early on it’s best to slot all your toggles with endurance reducers because the boost to the actual is so minimal that you’ll hardly notice it. While the same can be said for how much Training Enhancements reduce the amount of endurance you’re being drained, endurance is a much more valuable commodity than the debuff. I heard this a long time ago from an Supergroup mate and he told me a very simple rule: don’t buy Training Enhancements. Save your influence until level 12 and buy Duel Origins. The boosts you’re getting from Trainers are minimal and you’ll be fine with what you find doing missions or hunting.

- Know what you’re going to choose for a power or what you’re going to slot far in advance. Use a HeroPlanner or similar program to chart out what you’re taking and when and also how you are slotting it. Having a build laid out in advance can save you a lot of frustration later.

- It’s very tempting to slot out attacks but try to put slots in your Primary early on so you don’t have to later. Again, Training Enhancements don’t do a hill of beans in the long run so slot out your Primary and get the slots in before slots become a premium.

- Fluffy AI: Like all pets, Fluffy suffers from some silly AI but there are a few things that you can almost always count on. First, he almost always lead offs with Tenebrous Tentacles and he attacks the closest enemy. What this means is that they will aggro large groups do to the cone nature of Tentacles which can sometimes be his undoing. Their second attack is usually Petrifying Gaze and he will cast it on the enemy he just Tentacled. At this point he will check his own health and decide whether to cast Twilight Grasp. If he takes any damage whatsoever, he will use Twilight Grasp as soon as it is available and on the enemy he has been attacking. This heal will interrupt his “routine” of Tentacles and Petrifying gaze as it take priority over other attacks. Thirdly, he really likes to avoid melee range. Even though he has a personal aura, he rarely gets in range to use it. If you want him in melee combat, you pretty much have to cast him in it. How he uses Darkest Night is a bit of a mystery to me because I just never notice that he’s using it as it never jumps out when he does. One thing I do know, however, is that if he uses it, it only lasts about 10 seconds on any particular enemy and then it shuts off so he doesn’t keep it on all the time. And finally, the best piece of advice I can give you is this: kill the enemy he’s attacking. He doesn’t switch targets often so if you want him to affect another enemy, you have to dispatch the one he’s preoccupied with. Just make a routine of taking out his targets so he can hold and debuff the next.

- Know your own limits. It is sometimes very tempting to run ahead of your team because you know you can control most groups however, you are still a Squishy. You simply cannot take the damage of most alpha strikes later on and will find yourself eating dirt if you get overzealous. With Fluffy, this isn’t as much of a problem because he can heal you but still, let the Tank or Scrapper draw the initial aggro. At the same time, many mobs are clustered when they spawn and almost always perfectly arranged for your cones. Again, hang back and let someone take the initial alpha strike before tossing out a Fearsome Stare or Dark Pit because should you miss any great number of them, you’re going to face plant. Darkest Night is the exception here because it auto-hits but if you haven’t slotted it incredibly well (or at all) enemies can still hit you with a little luck.

- Don’t be surprised if teammates don’t understand your powers. I’ve had to explain what I do many times so don’t take offense if they simply don’t understand. Many times, seeing is believing so just get into the mission and show them what you do. If they still want that Empathy or Bubbler, let them try to get one without complaining. If you do your job, the Empath will say “I have nothing to do” and you’ll know that you’re getting it done.

- Feared mobs don’t fight back. If you can help it, after Fearsome Staring, take targets out one at a time because if you don’t attack the Feared enemies, they just stand there cowering until affected. This can be hard to do with Fluffy or if the mob is just screaming to get Tentacled/Nightfalled so just be a good judge of when you can do this.

- Team Play. When on a team, debuff/control before attacking (as a general rule) as your damage will pale in comparison to any Scrapper/Blaster worth his salt. Once your primary duty is fulfilled, blast away for two reasons. One, you’re adding damage, even if it isn’t stellar and two, because the more you attack, the more you’re debuffing the enemy’s accuracy, which in turn creates safety. So even by attacking, you’re fulfilling your main duty. Don’t believe, however, that the –Accuracy on your blasts will be enough to ensure team safety because at best, they’re only going to get up to 15-25% -Accuracy versus a Fearsome Stare or Darkest Night that does 20-35% by themselves. Adding that additional 15-25% on top of your Primary is what keeps everyone safe so know your role and fulfill it.

- CD3s. A well built CD3 will rival just about any good Controller so don’t be afraid to call yourself one. Yes, you don’t get the chance to “critical” a hold or get Containment but you will most definitely be able to control just as well and mitigate damage just as efficiently as some Controllers. If you’re on a team and they call for a Controller, just say “I’m already pretty good at that” and explain that you can fulfill that role. Once you get Fluffy, they’ll really begin to understand (because pets are supposed to only be for Controllers) but in the mean time, act like a blasting Controller.


And then, finally, there is Blackest Night himself. He is a bit of a variation on the BD3 and leans toward the Offender side of the coin. I play him like a CD3 but don’t have all the powers to make him one. At any rate, he kicks butt so I’m not complaining. This is what Blackest Night looks like at level 50.

Exported from version 1.5C of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Defender
Primary Powers - Ranged : Dark Miasma
Secondary Powers - Support : Dark Blast

01 : Dark Blast acc(01) dam(3) dam(3) dam(5) recred(5) endred(7)
01 : Twilight Grasp acc(01) hel(7) hel(9) hel(43) recred(46)
02 : Gloom acc(02) dam(9) dam(11) dam(11) endred(13) recred(13)
04 : Moonbeam acc(04) dam(15) dam(15) dam(17) recred(17) endred(19)
06 : Darkest Night endred(06) endred(19) thtdbf(21) thtdbf(21) thtdbf(23)
08 : Swift runspd(08)
10 : Hover fltspd(10)
12 : Fearsome Stare acc(12) recred(23) recred(25) recred(25) ferdur(27) ferdur(27)
14 : Fly fltspd(14) endred(43)
16 : Tenebrous Tentacles acc(16) dam(29) dam(29) dam(31) recred(31) endred(31)
18 : Health hel(18)
20 : Stamina endrec(20) endrec(33) endrec(33)
22 : Shadow Fall endred(22) damres(33) damres(34) damres(34) endred(46)
24 : Night Fall acc(24) dam(34) dam(36) dam(36) endred(36) recred(37)
26 : Hasten recred(26) recred(37) recred(37)
28 : Super Speed runspd(28)
30 : Tar Patch recred(30) recred(39) recred(39)
32 : Dark Servant acc(32) thtdbf(39) thtdbf(40) thtdbf(40) hel(40) hlddur(42)
35 : Petrifying Gaze recred(35) hlddur(43) acc(46)
38 : Recall Friend recred(38)
41 : Conserve Power recred(41) recred(42) recred(42)
44 : Temp Invulnerability endred(44) damres(45) damres(45) damres(45)
47 : Total Focus acc(47) dam(48) dam(48) dam(48) endred(50) recred(50)
49 : Howling Twilight recred(49) recred(50)

-------------------------------------------

01 : Brawl Empty(01)
01 : Sprint Empty(01)
02 : Rest Empty(02)

So there you have it! One of the most complete guides to the D3 out there, I hope this has helped. Have fun with your D3 and I hope you get as much enjoyment out of them as I did!

Hope to see you around so we can team!

Dark Blast

Dark Miasma can stand on its own as a powerful (one of the top) Defender Primaries and the reasons were given above, but why would you want to take Dark Blast over the other Secondaries? The first, and probably the most common, reason is for concept. There is nothing that quite says “I’m a bad-a**” than being completely dark and evil yet still fighting for good. Many people love having dark characters so this just naturally fits for them. The next reason is probably the most practical: Dark Blast synergizes very well with Dark Miasma. The –Acc on Dark Miasma’s debuffs will stack on top of the Dark Blast’s –Acc in its attacks. By simply attacking targets, you’re helping your Primary and vice versa. Also, Dark Blast features two “controlling” powers in Tenebrous Tentacles and Dark Pit that Immobilize or Disorient and a crowd control power in Torrent. In terms of damage potential, Dark Blast is on the lower end of the Secondaries. It does not have any way of boosting its own damage via an Aim power nor does it have an innate accuracy boost like Radiation or the “weapon” attacks. What it does have, however, is have the best or second best secondary effect for blasts. The –Acc can add up as you spam attacks and this increases your own survivability by merely doing what you were going to do anyway: kill the enemy. Every time you hit, they have a lower chance of hitting you back. Finally, Dark Blast is known for its Cone attacks and for good reason. Tenebrous Tentacles and Nightfall can be used back to back over large crowds to do substantial damage over time. Because Tentacles immobilizes foes, the enemies are held in place for Nightfall and another shot of Tentacles. Doing this over and over, you get tons of numbers flying over the enemies’ heads and if you add Tar Patch on top of this, you’ll feel almost like a Fire Tank’s Burn.

Dark Blast (Level 1)

The power this set is named after is going to be your single target bread and butter from level 1-50. It’s equal to most of the Blast Secondaries’ first attack in that it does moderate damage (2.7778 Brawl Index at base) and has a quick recharge time (4 seconds base). It does 100% Negative damage which isn’t as resisted as many of the attack types but those that are resisted to it (Banished Pantheon for example) are highly resistant to it. This is one power that you should slot up early with the recommended 1 Accuracy/3 Damage/1 Recharge/1 End Redux rule and use it against everything. If you’re skipping Gloom or Moonbeam, make sure to compensate by getting this baby slotted up ASAP.

Overall: 3-Star Power. You have to take it and it never becomes a monster in damage but you can lean on this attack and squeeze off a few rounds to make the enemy squirm a little.
CD3: 4-Star. As a CD3, you may skip other attacks so this will be your bread and butter for many levels. If that’s the case, get as many damage slots in it as you can if you want to be able to solo. If you team a lot, this isn’t as much of a problem but still devote a few slots early to it.
BD3: 3-Star. If you plan on taking a lot of attacks, don’t neglect Dark Blast. You’ll use it more than any other in most battles so make sure it’s doing moderate damage. Slotting a ToHit Debuff might not be a bad idea either if you don’t intend on using it as a damage dealer but as a debuffer.

Gloom (Level 2)

This is one of those attacks that takes some getting used to. Gloom is 175% stronger than Dark Blast (just shy of twice as much) but many times it doesn’t feel like it because the damage is delivered over about 4 seconds. Compared to most of the other second tier Blast Secondaries, Gloom does slightly more damage (on the order of 7.3%) but because of its DoT, some people don’t see the trade off as worth it. However, in the Dark Blast Secondary, Gloom is the second highest single-target damage attack and you get it at level 2. The tricky part, however, is that you have to wait to see if Gloom finishes off a target if you want to save endurance and impatience may make you throw out a Dark Blast. This causes some endurance issues in the beginning but as you use this power, you’ll learn to judge if it will kill a foe or not. Another problem lies in the fact that many times your Gloom will be ticking away and will kill the enemy but a teammate will run in and finish them off anyway. This leads to endurance problems for them because they didn’t need to attack. Still, this attack is a diamond in the rough and I suggest taking it at level 2 to give yourself a one-two combo of Dark Blast and Gloom that cycles fairly quickly and packs a decent punch.
Overall: 4-Star Power. Does more damage than Dark Blast but the DoT is tricky and sometimes bothersome. Fully slotted with 1 Acc/3 Dam/1 Recharge/1 End SOs, it becomes a remarkably potent weapon so use it often.
CD3: 4-Star. Still a great buy early on and it will help you get past some of the rough spots in your solo career. Slot it as you are able.
BD3: 4-Star. The Debuff on Gloom is greater than that on Dark Blast and lasts longer. So add a ToHit Debuff if you feel it necessary. I still would rather have flat out damage but that’s your call. Take it early and slot it up as you have the opportunities.

Moonbeam (Level 4)

This is your Snipe and it comes at level 4! Like all Snipes, Moonbeam suffers from the same pros and cons of having awesome damage at extreme range for an interruptible and long animation time attack. Here’s a few things to get you thinking though: Moonbeam is tied with having the longest range in the game (even among Snipes) and it has a significant Accuracy debuff attached (meaning that the foe you just shot might miss you on the return volley). Also, to reiterate, it’s available at level 4! Most sets have to wait until they’re 16 or 20 for their Snipe. Also, Moonbeam does the same exact same amount of damage as Dark Blast and Gloom combined (base) so if they’re slotted the same, you can know exactly how much damage a follow-up One-Two punch will inflict. If Moonbeam one-shots a baddie, than a Dark Blast and Gloom will do the same. Moonbeam is great if you want to pull a group or lay down some heavy fire. Unlike most Snipes, using Moonbeam in battle isn’t that difficult because enemies will be unable to interrupt your animation due to the –Accuracy on them. I use it all the time mid-battle to inflict a nasty reminder that Defender’s can do some decent damage from time to time. Used in conjunction with Tar Patch, a fully slotted Moonbeam can one-shot an even minion and can lay down some serious hurt on a lieutenant. I recommend taking this but you may not like Snipes. If you have to choose between Gloom and Moonbeam, I would personally take Gloom because it will be used more often and it is safer to use but Moonbeam isn’t bad either.

Overall: 3-Star Power. This is a love/hate relationship and I simply love it because I can actually get a big hit in from time to time. Pulling is nice too. I also like the fact that the actual graphic for it is a big-beefy blast rather than the pencil-thin bolt like the others. It’s impressive to watch it follow an enemy as they run.
CD-3: 2-Star. Again, Gloom is the better choice if you have to choose but you’ll actually get some use out of Moonbeam because enemies will be unable to interrupt you.
BD-3: 3-Star. If you’re not taking another Control power for awhile, throw Moonbeam in at level 4 and have a triumvirate of death dealers.

Dark Pit (Level 10)

One of the odd things about this “blast” power is that it does no damage. Instead, it causes a Mag 1 disorient over a decent area of effect that causes foes to stumble around like they’re drunk, unable to retaliate. Unfortunately, it has an innate -20% accuracy built in that puts you down to the 55% range of hitting an even minion instead of the usual 75%. Basically, this means that you literally have to put Accuracy enhancements in here (2 SOs minimum) if you want it to be reliable. For the CD3, this is an additional crowd control power that, in conjunction with Tar Patch, Howling Twilight, and Tenebrous Tentacles, you can pretty much turn a group of enemies into a dark pile of disoriented goo. The Tar Patch will slow them down and –resist them, the Howling Twilight will add its own Mag 1 disorient in addition to debuffing and Tentacles will hold them in place for other powers (once you get it). This combo would cause lieutenants to become disoriented as well. Many people lead off with Dark Pit, followed by Fearsome Stare to control the majority, if not the entire, group. Disoriented mobs can run away (at high speeds sometimes) so the Immobilize of Tentacles is a welcome addition. I suggest slotting two accuracy and a few recharge reducers into it as it does have a 60 second downtime and you’ll want it to start nearly every fight.

Overall: 3-Star Power. The accuracy penalty is hard to overcome early on but once it is accounted for, this becomes a very nice opening move.
CD3: 4-Star. It’s a control power so you really do want to have it. Enemies that are stumbling around don’t fight back.
BD3: 2-Star. It doesn’t debuff and the slots could go elsewhere. I respecced out of it in my 20’s and haven’t looked back. It’d be nice to have from time to time but I have lived happily without it.

Tenebrous Tentacles (Level 16)

Most D3s swore by Tentacles back in the day because it was their first “cool” power that not only did damage but immobilized and was nearly the defining power for D3s in general. Most would still agree it is the staple power of the Dark Blast set and as such, I’ll go into some detail on how this power is used. First off, it’s a Cone attack, something to be loved or hated depending on your school of thought. Positioning is key when using it to make sure you get everything you want/can get in the Cone. Tentacles has a very broad cone, somewhere along the lines of 120 degrees in front of you and about 20 feet deep. As such, you needn’t be too far away to get a large group within its slimy clutches. Tentacles is a somewhat dubious attack power because it does roughly the damage of Dark Blast but over about 8-10 seconds, making it not the greatest attack power out there. For pure damage, it will never become a show-stopper but when facing large groups, a Dark Blast over the head of 10 enemies is worth it. Most people love the fact that it immobilizes foes and keeps them from running. This is especially helpful to melee classes and those with such powers as Burn. Tentacles also does primarily Smashing damage, the only non-Negative damage you get. Also note that the duration on the Immobilize is far greater than the recharge time, meaning that you needn’t spam the power to keep the immobilize going. Although Fearsome Stare will be a better control power, Tentacles will also help you control the battlefield by making sure enemies don’t go anywhere. Slotting is something kind of tricky, despite what you might think. If there is one attack power that you could pull slots from, I say it’s this one. Since it does the least amount of damage of any of your attacks, you’ll get less of a benefit from slotting it. This is true of the opposite: pulling slots out hurts your damage less than pulling it from other powers. Typical slotting is recommended or add a Range enhancer. That way it’s roughly the same “depth” as Night Fall, which helps in positioning your cones. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Overall: 5-Star Power. Still the defining Dark Blast power, get it at 16 and start feeling powerful. Getting used to the Cone takes some time but positioning yourself won’t take long to master. Slotting is your preference but I do suggest investing at least two more into it beyond base.
CD3: 4-Stars. Fearsome Stare will probably do 85% what Tentacles does so adding this may seem redundant, however, Tentacles will keep enemies from running which Fearsome Stare does not do all the time and it recharges much faster. Just add it to your impressive list of controlling powers.
BD3:5-Stars. See CD3 but also add on that the Debuffing factor of Tentacles is nice in addition to keeping enemies near your Anchor. Whether you take this as an attack or a debuffing tool, you can’t go wrong.

Night Fall (Level 20)

A long misunderstood power that in any other set would be near useless makes a nice niche in the D3 set. Night Fall is a pure damage dealer that happens to be in the form of a narrow but deep Cone. What makes it unique is that it synergizes incredibly well with your existing cones (Fearsome Stare and Tentacles) if you simply take a few steps back before firing. It also does roughly Dark Blast damage (actually just about 10% more and 15% more than Tentacles) but it’s a very quick Damage over Time. The numbers fly up like a Burn patch and are over with in about one full second so to say this is Damage over Time is a little bit of a misnomer because it is only slightly less than instant. Where the Single-Target blasts had the one-two punch of Dark Blast and Gloom, the Area of Effect blasts are also paired together intimately. Tentacles can hold the group in place and Nightfall, after positioning, can hit the same group with more damage. The two attacks cycle fairly quickly and you can melt large groups easily (especially with a Tar Patch underneath). This is costly, however. Nightfall costs a whopping 19 endurance per use and Tentacles uses 15 so each time you use this one-two you’ve burned a third of your endurance for what comes out to be just a little over two Dark Blasts in damage. This might not seem like a good trade-off but think of it this way: if there were 10 enemies in a group, you’d have to shoot them 10 times with Dark Blast to equal one Nightfall. The rule of thumb I like to use is that I don’t use Nightfall on anything less than three targets. After 3 targets, the damage per endurance becomes positive versus Dark Blast and applying Nightfall is to your advantage. Once Stamina comes into play, you’ll find that spamming Tentacles and Nightfall over and over to kill groups is not as costly as it was and you’ll be able to kill faster than ever. Like all pure attack powers, I suggest 1 Accuracy/3 Dam/1 Recharge/1 End if you can spare the slots.

Overall: 4-Star Power. I consider it to be just under Tentacles in usefulness in the long run, especially if you want to take out large groups in the shortest time possible. It, too, takes some getting used to for positioning but once that is down, you’ll find it to be a great tool to have.
CD3: 3-Stars. Skippable if a controlling power comes up and probably skippable if you don’t intend to be a Cone damage dealer. Still, I recommend it if only to solo better.
BD3: 4-Stars. In addition to the damage, the debuff is also nice and spamming Tentacles and Nightfall is doubly debuffing the whole gaggle of enemies. Again, if you want to add ToHit Debuffs to this, it’s a great power to have because it spreads all that debuff around to a ton of enemies.

Torrent (Level 28)

For a level 28 power, this is a bit of a let down. Unlike the Energy Blast/Torrent or the Radiation Blast/Electron Haze, this Cone “attack” does virtually no damage at all but instead has a very good chance (somewhere around 90%) to knockback foes should it hit. I’ve tried this power out on the Test server and, while occasionally useful, I found that it simply sat unused 90% of the time. This, unlike the aforementioned Cone “Torrents”, is a control power and should be treated as such (like a Power Push or Gale). When used, it sends a black cloud of mire toward the enemy, much like Tenebrous Tentacles and those caught and hit within it go flying back a good distance. Higher level foes will not be pushed far but lower level foes simply get launched. This is a good “Get out of my face!” power if melee attackers are trying to get close enough to count the number of eyelashes you have. If you have an Anchor, this could be used to launch foes back toward the anchor or if you have a Tar Patch down, it could throw them back into it. However, more often than not, you’ll probably throw them out of the anchor or Tar Patch. As with all Knockback, teams that rely one aggro and control will dislike you for throwing foes around every which way so be mindful of their tactics. This, too, has a small debuff on it but not enough to warrant using it for that sole purpose alone. Personally, this is a fun power to have when you’re level 49 and have nothing else to take so you can impress the newbies in Atlas Park by launching level 1 Hellions 300 feet back. Outside of that, I wouldn’t recommend this power. Should you take it, I recommend an Accuracy (to make sure that if you’re using it to save your butt that it hits) but really nothing more unless you want to send that Hellion 600 feet with another Knockback enhancer.

Overall:2-Star Power. It’s usefulness is limited in most situations and there are a host of other powers to take at level 28 so I suggest skipping it entirely. If it came earlier, it would be better (i.e. switch Dark Pit and Torrent) but since it is not, it loses its luster.
CD3: 3-Star Power. As a controlling power, you might want to take it to position enemies within Cones or whatnot. However, this again, is situational at best.
BD3:1-Star Power. Simply doesn’t add anything you can’t get elsewhere and throwing people around is a bad thing with anchors. Skip it.

Life Drain (Level 35)

Oh the power that has absolutely no business being in with a D3. This power could possibly make up for not having a personal heal in your Primary (a la Storm and Force Field) but even then it costs a ton for very little health. Being a D3 that already has a heal power that has to hit in Twilight Grasp, this power is 100% worthless. It doesn’t do any more damage than Dark Blast, costs 3 times as much and recharges over 3 times longer as well. There is simply no redeeming quality in the power. So, alas, your level 35 power is a lemon but consider yourself lucky. Because you don’t take this power, you can take just about anything you missed along the way right here. Also, 6 slots will open up over the course of the next to levels to finish slotting out things that are lacking. So really, it is a blessing in disguise.

Overall: 1-Star Power. Worthless in every way shape and form but the slots are nice to have.
CD3: 1-Star. Perhaps even more worthless to a CD3 because it doesn’t control anything.
BD3: 1-Star. Nope, not even going to say “it debuffs.” Worthless.

Blackstar (Level 38)

At level 38 you get your Nuke and like the others, it has its drawbacks. First, it drains all your endurance and you’ll be unable to recover for a few seconds. Two, anything you don’t kill will automatically be aggroed to you in your vulnerable state. However, IT’S A FREAKING NUKE!!! A lot people don’t use it often and probably would get more use out of another power but how can you skip your level 38 uber attack? Since ED, I’d slot it with 1 Acc, 3 Dam, and 2 Recharge. This power is pretty much a “cool” power to have worth little practical value but having it never hurts. Since you’ll have Fearsome Stared, Tentacled, Nightfalled, and Tar Patched the group already, in addition to Fluffy’s Holds and Debuffs, you’ll actually be safest “Nuke-r” around. If anything is left standing, Fluffy will automatically target them and since Blackstar puts a massive accuracy debuff on everything it hits, you might not even get hit by return fire. Of all the Nukes in the Defender Secondaries, Blackstar is probably in the middle but in addition to Fluffy, it becomes a contender simply because you can use it without as much fear of dying afterwards. Take it, show it to your friends and impress the masses. Later on, you may get Soul Drain that will add an additional 50% of damage to Blackstar (if you max it) and if you add in the Tar Patch –resist, you’ll really go boom. That doesn’t happen to a minimum of level 47 but once you get it, it will be impressive. One more thing is that Defender Nukes are Finishers, not Openers. Unlike Blasters, you can’t expect your nuke to drop everything at once while they have full health. Even cons and +1s might die but not Lts. or +2s. So basically, if you’ve gotten a lot of enemies to half health or below, fire off your Nuke to finish them. You’ll still be safe because of all the debuffs.

Overall:3-Star Power. Granted, you don’t have to take it but it’d be a crying shame if you didn’t. Shame on you for thinking about skipping it! It’s a nuke, man! A Nuke!!!
CD3: 2-Star Power. Does no controlling but heck if you’re not cool when you blow a group of 16 guys away.
BD3: 4-Star Power. It debuffs too! Plus…it BLOWS $*^& UP!

Purpose

There are a lot of Dark/Dark guides out there but I wanted mine to be a little different just so that the average player could get a feel for what he/she wants to do with their Dark/Dark Defender or Corruptor (D3). D3s are very versatile and besides the 4 or so powers that probably shouldn’t be taken, you really can’t go wrong choosing the “cool” powers.

So what does a D3 have to offer and why should you want to be one? D3s have the luxury and privilege of being in the upper echelon of Primary/Secondaries because we have so many tools at our disposal and because we are balanced nicely between offensive and defensive ability. D3s can perform many roles within a team and does many of them quite well but if you want to know what we’re best at it comes down to this: safety. Unlike the Empathy Defender that heals all the damage that a team takes or the Force Field Defender that gives everyone high defense, Dark Defenders prevent the enemy from hitting you with their myriad of –Accuracy debuffs or they simply stop the enemy from attacking with a variety of control powers, much like an actual Controller. In addition, they are the only non-Controller with true pets and those pets are quite versatile, much like the D3 themselves, that also do a ton of debuffing and controlling. In addition, D3s have the ability to fine tune themselves to a couple of distinct roles and each role is noticeably different. So, while I will do the typical “here’s the power, when to take it and how to slot it” jig, I’m also going to give you how I feel it would be best used if you’re a “Controller” D3 (CD3) or a “Buffing” D3 (BD3, though it’s more like a De-buffing D3 but that would become a D4 and there’s already a D4 out there, but I digress).

Here’s how I classify the CD3 vs. the BD3

Controller D3s are all about controlling the enemy and making sure that they’re, in some way, mezzed into submission. This can be done through the wide variety of powers within both the Dark Miasma and Dark Blast sets. The general rule here is that if there is a “hold” (hold, disorient, sleep, fear, stun, etc.) power that comes up at the same time as a Blast power in the Secondary, the CD3 will, within limits, take the hold power over the attack. Similarly, in battle, the CD3 will use a control power over an attack, if all things were equal. This doesn’t mean that they completely ignore their secondary or that they don’t attack in battle or can’t solo, it simply means that they’re primary concern is to take foes out of the fight.

Buffing D3s are not quite opposites of the CD3s but are different animals entirely. They will rely more on the toggles (Darkest Night/Shadowfall) to insure their (and their team’s) safety instead of spamming holds or fears. This isn’t to say that they skip the holds, it’s just that they rely less on them. The BD3 is content with flooring accuracy to the 5% basement on mobs and playing the chance game with hits, kind of like a pure defense set like Super Reflexes or Ice Armor. However, by playing this game of death, they are freer to take attacks and slot them up instead of taking all the holds. The BD3 can also rely on his attacks to do the de-buffing, meaning, they will probably attack more than the CD3 if only to get more –Acc on their foes.

Both D3s are great and one is not necessarily better than the other. I would have to say that CD3 is a bit more team friendly and is “safer” than the BD3 but the trade-off there is that the BD3 will have more powerful attacks and probably solo faster. This isn’t to say one is not team friendly (the BD3 still rocks) and the other can’t solo (the CD3 will still do great) it’s just that in certain areas, one will be more efficient than the other.

I would also like to mention at this point that the BD3 and CD3, despite their class-distinction will overlap considerably. The BD3 will probably still get Fearsome Stare and Dark Servant (henceforth known as Fluffy) in addition to a sometimes handy Petrifying Gaze. This gives them a wide-array of controlling powers already. The CD3 will simply expand upon that by using Howling Twilight as a mezz power and grabbing Dark Pit while possibly skipping Darkest Night altogether (why debuff an enemy that can’t fight back?) due to its endurance drain. The slotting of the CD3 and BD3 will also be different but that will be covered later.

This guide is designed to help both sides of the D3 by listing a power, telling what it does and giving it a star-system for how useful it would be for a CD3 and BD3. Some powers will heavily favor one side or the other and some will be great regardless of what kind of D3 you want to make. It’s still all your decision though. Have fun and experiment to see which one you enjoy the most!

Dark Miasma

Dark Miasma is great because it’s the only unique Defender set that isn’t shared as a secondary with Controllers. It’s a useful combination of holds, fears, heals, and –Acc debuffs that really turn enemies into whiffing machines. Darks are sometimes called the most defensive of the Defender primaries and this is for good reason. They lack any form of buffing an ally and all their attacks affect enemies and not the team itself. Tar Patch may reduce resistance (the only form of damage boost we get) but other than that, teams will probably not even know that your powers are at work. You will forever be the unsung hero because it’s hard to tell that enemies are missing you. Big green numbers, glowing buffs and bright green anchors are the tell-tale signs of the other Primaries but not with you. You just sit back and watch the enemies miss, something often underappreciated by teams.

The powers are as follows:

Twilight Grasp (Level 1)

From everything I’ve heard, the base heal on this nifty little power is 22% of your life and that goes a long way when you finally get a few Heal SOs in it. It’ll save your butt on many occasions but there are two things that you, and your team must know about it. First, it has to hit. Your ability to heal is directly proportional to the enemies you fight. If you’re in the deep purple range, don’t expect to heal often. If you’re fighting whites and lower, this is a very reliable heal. Always, always, always, slot an accuracy enhancement in here, before anything else (heals included) so that when that critical need comes and you have to be healed, it doesn’t whiff completely. Secondly, the effect of the power is a fairly small radius around you and if teammates want healed, they have to be within about 10-12 feet of you. It’s very difficult to heal others as they run like chickens with their heads cut off in a battle so try to warn the team if you’re the primary healer. Speaking of, I wouldn’t recommend being the primary healer due to the fact that the heals, while normally reliable, aren’t guaranteed. Also, while Twilight Grasp does heal a good chunk of life for you, it won’t be as significant to a Tank or Scrapper with higher max HP. Just remember that if they’re on the verge of death. Finally, TG has an added minus regen effect that will slow/stop regen for about 10 seconds. This is absolutely critical for high-hitpoint enemies that can regen 100s of life per tick (because it is percentage based). Using this on a Boss isn’t a bad idea even if no one needs the heal for this reason alone. Slot at least 1 Acc and whatever you want after that. 3 Heals, 1 Recharge wouldn’t be bad either.

Overall: 5-Star Power. Take it and love it. Slot it up with 3 or 4 early and respec out of those slots later in the game when Fluffy can do some of that for you. This goes for both BD3 and CD3 types.

Tar Patch: (Level 1)

With the addition of the –resistance aspect of Tar Patch and the –fly/-jump, this has become a must have power for anyone that wants to increase their damage.It has a 45 second duration and a 90 second recharge. For those playing at home this means that Hasten and the initial slot with a recharge SO means that it’s ready to go the second it runs out. However, without Hasten, 3 Recharge SOs will also make it available the second the first patch fades. Also, more than one Dark/* can double up on Tar Patch duty and just spam as many as they can to increase efficiency. Now, the –resistance is the reason to get the power but the original power had a slow effect that really helped in controlling enemies. Basically, you would lay a Patch down and snipe the group so that they ran through the Patch. Melee attackers would take forever to get to you and you could blast them on the way in. This was also helpful to Melee teammates who didn’t want their foes to run. Slotting comes down to whether you want to have more Tar Patches out (which is what I recommend so you can use it every battle) or if you want to increase the slow aspect of the Patch. You can’t slow enemies past 10% of their normal walk/run speed so don’t go overboard. I have 6-slotted this baby with all recharges and it’s up every 21 seconds or so. Double-stacking is freaking beautiful so I recommend it highly if you can manage it but that’s only possible if you have Hasten or some Buffs from teammates.

Overall: 4-Star Power. The –resist is absolutely awesome and I highly recommend it for any D3. If you’re using it just for the slow/-fly/-jump aspect then:
CD3: 4-Star (anything not held won’t be going anywhere)
BD3: 4-Star (keeps large groups near your anchor)

Darkest Night (Level 2)

For the BD3…this is your Promised Land. To the CD3…it is a waste of endurance for anything less than an AV. Darkest Night reduces Accuracy by 35% and reduces the damage of incoming attacks by 37.5%. It is a somewhat expensive toggle that requires an anchor but affects a fairly large area around the anchor. When fully slotted out with To Hit Debuffs, this monster can floor just about anything (within reason) to the 5% Accuracy basement and what this means is that you can fight with near impunity against anything +4 or so and below. However, this cornerstone of Dark Miasma has it’s downfalls. First, it is endurance heavy. You will notice the sharp contrast between fighting with it on and off. Early on, I say just slot it with endurance reducers and throw it on a boss that is giving you trouble. Once SOs open up, 3-slot it with ToHit Debuffs and as many Endurance Reducers as you feel necessary. Or you could skip it entirely, something I don’t recommend but if you’re CD3, it might make sense. My current set up is 2 End Reducers and 3 ToHit Debuffs. It’s still wildly effective and cost efficient.

Overall: I still say it’s a 5-star power that is the cornerstone of the set. The damage reduction alone is worth taking it for.
BD3: 5-Star power (I cannot stress enough how important this is for you)
CD3: 2-Star power (might be nothing more than an endurance drain but situationally useful against tough foes)

Howling Twilight (Level 6)

This has a few things going for it. One, it’s an auto-hit, area of effect Rez that resurrects an entire team instantly to full health and endurance. Two, it’s a mag 1 disorient and does significant -recharge of all foes in its area. The only downside to this power being used like a pure controlling power is its recharge. Even maxed out with 3 SOs and Hasten this will only come up once every 67 seconds. It does require an enemy to hit to get the rez so remember that you can’t just rez anybody at any time.

Overall: 3-Star Power. This is arguably the best rez in the game due to being able to rez multiple people to full health and endurance in addition to its other effects.
CD3: 4-Star Power (Recharge slightly too long to make it an every battle weapon but auto hit is really nice)
BD3: 2-Star Power. (A very nice rez but skippable until later)

Shadow Fall (Level 8)

This nice little area of effect power has some really great abilities. First off, it’s a team stealth. This gives everyone around you a stealth factor greater than Stealth from the power pool. Secondly, it provides a tiny amount of defense (2.5%) which always helps. Thirdly, and most importantly, it gives Negative, Energy, and PSIONIC resistance at a base level of 20%. Since Psi resistance is nearly non-existent to everyone else, this is a rare commodity for Tanks and Scrappers looking to fight Psychic Clock Kings and whatnot. To begin with, slot it with endurance reducers and try to run it as much as possible. The defense and stealth is simply too good to pass up. Eventually, once Negative, Energy, and Psi become more common, I’d slot this puppy up with resistance enhancements. With 3 Resistance SOs, you get 32% resistance to all of those damage types. Also note that turning on Super Speed while running Shadow Fall is the same as running Invisibility. So, if you want to stealth through missions, turn them both on and click the glowies, find the boss and his gang, etc. A couple Endurance Reducers will go a long way in keeping your blue bar healthy.

Overall: 5-Star Power. Too many good things to pass up in this power and it’s not terribly expensive. Very team friendly and gives Psi resistance.
CD3: 5-Star Power. (Helps with the initial alpha of holds in addition to what’s been previously mentioned)
BD3: 5-Star Power. (See overall)

Fearsome Stare (Level 12)

Fearsome Stare is a cornerstone power of Dark Miasma. This bad boy does two things and does them very well. First, it puts a Fear effect on baddies within a HUGE cone. This fear makes enemies cower and unable to attack unless they are attacked first. Even if they are attacked, they can get one attack off and then must resume the “fear position” thereby having a –recharge effect. What this amounts to is a pseudo-hold that, if you are smart, can turn into a hold by not touching the other feared mobs. The fear lasts 20 seconds and has a 40 second recharge. It’s also pretty cheap. Secondly, it puts a modest –Acc debuff on enemies, somewhere in the order of 15%, which also stacks. So, you can easily get a -30% debuff on most foes just by using two applications of Fearsome Stare. Slotting is more of an issue now, however. You need it to hit, so 1 Acc is mandatory. You want it up as much as possible, so 3 Recharge would be nice, but you also wan the fear effect to last a good amount of time, so 2 Fear Durations would also be good. This would make the power come up every 20 seconds with a Fear duration of 33 seconds.

Overall: 5-Star Power. Huge cone, cheap, massive debuff and Fear effect, this power has it all. Takes slots to make great, however.
CD3: 5-Star (a great, maybe the greatest, control power in the set)
BD3: 5-Star (a great debuffing power, but the control is gravy)

Petrifying Gaze (Level 18)

The only true “hold” of the set, Petrifying Gaze is a power that takes some slots to make useful. It’s a mag 3 single-target hold, meaning that you’ll be able to lock down lieutenants and minions in one application. Its base recharge is 16 seconds and has a duration of 12 seconds. That means that it won’t be able to hold a boss without a bit of help. A Recharge SO would bring it down to 12 (two would make it 9.66) seconds while a Hold Duration would extend it to 16 seconds. This, in my opinion, is enough to make it useable but it won’t be as powerful as Controller holds. Dark Servant also has this power but because you can’t enhance their Petrifying Gaze, it won’t be near as effective as yours. However, Fluffy will help you lock down the occasional minion or lieutenant, which always helps. The obligatory Accuracy is also needed as it doesn’t have the accuracy bonus of Controller holds.

Overall: 3-star Power. Without slots/Hasten, it’s useful but not great.
CD3: 4-Star. Slotted up, a good hold but you’ll still be jealous of Controllers.
BD3:3-Star. Still practical and a few slots aren’t that hard to find.

Black Hole (Level 26)

Well, to say this is the lame duck power of the set is about right. Yeah, it can be used to turn a group of enemies intangible for a brief amount of time and take them out of the fight but the duration (20 seconds) isn’t worth the massive endurance cost and the long recharge. Basically, this power sucks not only because it’s worthless but because it’s worthless and expensive! The only thing I could really see this power being used for is for that CD3 that wants to be as “controller-ish” as possible. Even still, it’s situational at best. Try it on Test and see what you think but I personally wouldn’t get a Moonbeam snipe’s distance near it.
Overall: 1-Star. Completely useless in 90% of the situations you’ll encounter and that 10% where it could be useful can be covered by other powers, namely Fearsome Stare.
CD3: 1-Star. (I’d still say it’s totally useless)
BD3: 1-Star. (Ditto)

Dark Servant (Level 32)

Totally reworked in Issue 5, Dark Servant was drastically reduced in power by disallowing multiple instances of them. Also, Petrifying Gaze was reduced on them, just like the Primary Power. Dark Servants have a 4 minute recharge and duration, unlike the Controller level 32 pets that have virtually unlimited duration. They will follow you up elevators and through portals, however. Fluffy can also be unsummoned by typing /release_pets.

Dark Servant, as a utility pet, works best if you can realize his/her/its limitations and work around them. It has 5 powers: Twilight Grasp (identical to yours), Petrifying Gaze (also identical), Darkest Night (similar in power but only affects one target), Tenebrous Tentacles (vastly reduced damage but otherwise the same), and Chill of the Night, the aura that does minor damage and rumors to have incredible Accuracy debuffing capability. Chill of the Night will always be on and Fluffy will cycle through the various attacks in no real particular order. He will also follow you quite religiously and usually attacks the closest thing next to him. He has more health than you do and can be used as an “alpha-strike” absorber or as a small meat-shield while solo-ing.

Fluffy will partially replace the need to debuff and control enemies but not as much as it used to. Properly slotted (see below), a Dark Servant can be very effective but don’t expect it to do your job for you. I would never recommend dropping Dark Servant altogether but there will be various camps on how to slot it.

The first theory on how to slot Dark Servant is to be minimal-istic and stick with a “base” pet. Therefore, this camp would say to keep Fluffy at either base or 1 slot. An Accuracy would be very helpful and a Heal or ToHit Debuff would be optional to get slightly more mileage out of him/her/it.

The second theory is to maximize Fluffy for Debuffing. One Accuracy and 3 ToHit Debuffs would make everything that Fluffy does (minus Petrifying Gaze) seriously drop the accuracy of enemies. Chill of the Night, Darkest Night, Twilight Grasp and Tenebrous Tentacles all have –Accuracy debuffs and this means that, more often than not, Fluffy can be a Debuff bot on top of your own personal debuffing abilities. Use the other two slots for Heals or Holds.

The third theory is to make Fluffy an all-around stronger pet by slotting for Accuracy, Hold duration, Heals, and ToHit Debuffs. Instead of super-charging any one aspect of Fluffy, they boost everything to make him more effective with every power.

Overall: 5 Star Power. A very nice utility pet that will help you a lot in your upper-levels. Can be made very powerful or left at base and still be useful.
CD3: 5-Star. Helps you hold a little but debuffs enemies, something you might not have a lot of at this point in your career. Any help is good help.
BD3: 5-Star. Can be enhanced to be a very powerful Debuffer but the heals and holds are always welcome.

Good Guide!

I'm writing my own Bots/FF Guide and will do it in my own characteristic style but this is a great overview of what is available to this AT.

Now you took the Recharge enhancements out because you thought there would be confusion...what prevented you guys from putting in the long/short help that Recharge enhancements would enhance the Henchmen and not the recharge of the Summoning of the Henchmen?

Or were there balance issues about recharge that would have lead to even more problems? I can see MMs slotting Recharge in their Henchmen in order to squeeze out more DPS.

Thanks!

P.S. (You wouldn't happen to know, to put this to rest, Protector Bot Bubbles Defense? Ongoing discussion that I would love to be resolved)

Issue 6/ED Guide...

...coming soon...

Lord...what ED has done to Blackest Night...

It's a doozy...

Re-vamping this guide for ED is a massive undertaking and while I love the game...I don't know if I have the time or energy to do so.

We'll see. So much to change...tactics will change so much. Slotting is going to be so much more numbers intensive...

Ugh.

For the record, I'm flat out against ED and my current un-respec'd toon is roughly 1/3 as effective as Issue 5, which was about 1/2 as effective as Issue 4. Thus...over the last few months, Blackest Night is now about 1/6 of what he was. He really is a shadow of his former self. It's incredibly disappointing to watch a character that you've played for over 700 hours to become so gutted that he's not fun to play anymore. There was a point in Issue 4 where I knew that this was going to be the height of his power and I felt really bad because it was so bittersweet. I knew he was going to get nerfed into oblivion and I realized that it was going to be downhill from there. I wish I wasn't right but I was.

Dark Miasma/Dark Blast is also now on the Corruptor in CoV and I'd have to say, it probably should have started there to begin with. Dark/Dark Corruptors (DDCs) far and away do more damage and can operate at a much more offensive level than the best Offender D3s. They sacrifice some safety to do so but all in all, it's a very managable sacrifice. I may very well make Blackest Night a Corruptor (if the Hero-to-Villain thing works). I love being a Hero but the nature of this set seems designed for Offense and not Defense.

Anyway, thanks for the support thus far and I really wish this guide was worth more but it's not now. It's obsolete...

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Fluffy's always had Darkest Night. I got him way back in issue #2. He used his Darkest Night a lot more stupidly back then. He'd put it up and then NEVER turn it off! Oh gods, did that get me killed a lot.

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Hehe, I'm not saying that Fluffy didn't have DN before I5 but that his version of DN pre-I5 was a single-target Debuff and not the AoE version a Dark/* Defender has.

Thought I'd clear that up. At least I don't think it was AoE...man, it's been awhile since I remember those days. 3 Fluffies...all spamming stuff...it was beautiful...

As I have learned personally and as others have told me, yes, Fluffy's Darkest Night is identical to the Dark Miasma version and not a single-target only debuff.

Now, Issue 4's version of Fluffy did not have this. I guess there was a stealth buff to Fluffy in I5 and we just couldn't really notice it. However, while my Fluffy is a debuff bot, I can't guarantee when and who he'll use it on so I keep my Darkesnt Night well slotted, just to be sure that everyone is debuffed.

So yeah, slotting for Debuff is the way to go now.

Cheers!

Indeed, I should have mentioned that Howling Twilight's rez range is on smallish side. No, range enhancers won't increase the range of the rez but you might be surprised at how much further you can hit an enemy with the power in order to rez them if you add one.

What I'm saying is this: the downside of this power is that you need an enemy to fuel it. Sometimes it's not that there aren't enemies, they're just out of range and pulling them could be tricky. Instead, if you pop a couple Ranges in the rez, you might be able to get that same mob in range without worrying about aggro.

It's a stretch, I know but that's one way of getting more mileage out of Howling Twilight.

Cheers!

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Just out of curiosity on the tactics build... is this meant as a from lvl one on up build or is it when I hit 50 i should respec and try it... I'm basically a 21st lvl and noticed that Tar was taken late in game... for me tar was really grp friendly earlier...I don't solo all the time and would like to be semi grp viable, and yet efficiently solo. I guess I want my cake and be able to eat it too...

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Yes, the tactics build is an incredibly un-thought out build that I respec'd into at 50. Don't use it unless you're already at 50. That build would be completely unviable to play through 1-50.

As for Vigilence:

I'm not going to depend on it. As a power that will only come into play when either your small team is getting hammered or your big team is getting pressed, I don't think it's necessary to write a Guide in the context of this new inherent. 6-Slot Stamina and be careful with your Endurance because Vigilence isn't going to save you from poor power management. Likewise, think of Vigilence more as a safety net then a bullet-proof vest when it comes to endurance. If you're team starts getting hurt then it will "pad" your ability to attack or buff/debuff, it won't save it. Recharge rates and AoE caps are still going to prevent you from doing everything you need to most of the time.

Anyway, thanks for all the support thus far. I appreciate it!

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Fearsome Stare (Level 12)

Slotting is more of an issue now, however. With perma-Hasten alone, it comes up every 23.5 seconds but that’s not enough to make it stack. Adding a Recharge will drop it to every 20 seconds but it still would run out the second it came up again. My personal preference is 1 Accuracy, 1 Recharge, and 1 Fear Duration as it would give the power good accuracy, a 20 second recharge and a 26.6 duration, meaning self-stacking. More slots would make the power more useful but duration is all that should be slotted for as a recharge SO would only drop it another 3 seconds while Fear Duration ups it 6.6 seconds.

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Sorry if this is a really stupid question but according to the latest update of Joe Chotts CoH Planner, this now has a 12 sec recharge and 10 second duration in I5. Would this change have any effect on how you would slot this power?

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Joe Chott's Planner has never been right on Fearsome Stare. Even before I5, it had a 12 second recharge and 35 second duration.

Now, it is a 40 second recharge, 20 second duration. That I know for sure.

I wish the CoH planner was more reliable for Defenders but it's not. Tanks/Scrappers seem to have pretty consistent numbers though.

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I love this thread, everything I ever needed to know about my D3 in one convenient place.

How about the medicine pool? The Aid powers don't appeal much, but I usually duo with a Blaster and am thinking about Stimulant as a way to give her some mez protection when it's really needed.

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Wow...it never dawned on me that Medicine Pool could be a viable choice for a D3...major oversight on my part.

Medicine

General thoughts: The Medicine pool would tool your D3 to be more team-friendly and more versatile as a traditional "healer" but my interpretation of Dark Miasma is that if you're doing your job, heals should not be a huge part of gameplay. Except for Stimulent, Dark Miasma contains "better" versions of the other 3 powers. I'll explain in the detailed descriptions of the Pool powers themeselves:

Aid Other: While Twilight Grasp is an excellent heal, a targeted heal (even if it is interruptable) can be valuable should Twilight Grasp miss the target or you're not in range of your teammate. However, Twilight Grasp costs less, recharges faster and heals multiple people in range. The only thing Aid Other has that is better than Twilight Grasp is that it doesn't miss, if it doesn't get interrupted. Both powers have a drawback to them but I'd have to say Twilight Grasp is far and away the better heal power, and that's not taking into consideration the debuffs associated with it.

Stimulent: The one power that really would be useful in a team setting where squishies are involved or the Scrappers/Tanks haven't gotten their Mez resistance yet. I have little experience with this power and couldn't tell you how long the resistance lasts but even if it's only 10-15 seconds, that's incredibly helpful if you're getting mezzed all the time. Of all the powers in the Medicine Pool to take, this is the only one I'd suggest.

Aid Self: A self-heal that is interruptable. For the same reasons as I said above in Aid Other, Twilight Grasp is still the better heal. This could be good if you like to play a tank mage role and do intentionally take hits for the team. Other than that, stick with Twilight Grasp.

Resuscitate: For the same reasons the other Heals in the Medicine Pool are different but inferior to Dark Miasma's counterparts, this too is inferior in every way but one: it doesn't take an enemy nearby to use. Howling Twilight's main drawback is the reason this power shines a little brighter, but you'd have to spend 3 powers to get it and the rez itself is far worse than Howling Twilight's. Resuscitate is the same cost, same recharge as HT but the rez itself is far inferior (half hitpoints, no endurance as opposed to full for both with HT).

Overall, the pool is skippable in my opinion or if you had an extra pool and an extra power to grab, Stimulent could be worth it.

As per usual...

Is there anything I can clear up or expand on to make the guide better?

Feel free to ask questions in this thread...it won't hurt my feelings, I promise!

Just to let you know that my work is never done, I've already been tooling around with Blackest Night himself to squeeze out every last drop of efficiency from every power. I've been going over every power and trying to tool it to the most efficient "min/maxed" build that I can attain.

I'll let you know how it goes. Suffice to say, I might be dropping a power and using the slots to max out powers that are close but not quite 6-slotted. I'll see what happens on Test.

Anyway, thanks for all the support thus far! Keep the questions coming!