Blue_Fenix

I am the only person I know who uses this particular solution I came up with a few years ago.

Namely, SCREW WASD! and SCREW MODIFIER KEYS!

WASD is way too close to the left-hand side of the keyboard to be efficient, and I HATE having to use alt and ctrl to activate my powers

Instead, I use ESDF for movement. It's the exact same shape and layout, just 1 key to the right. I also use W and R for strafing, since I like to have both keyboard turn and strafe readily available. What benefit is one key to the right, you ask?

-Way easier to hit the 6 key, and to a lesser extent, 7 through 0. Where most people use 1-5 easily, I use 1-6 with the same amount of effort
-Q, A, and Z all become available to bind to the second row of my power tray
-X gets bound to 'down' for going down while flying
-G and V are also bound to powers on row 2, in fact, these are usually my 2 most used attacks
-H and B usually get bound to toggling jet packs, travel powers, etc.
-C sometimes gets bound to something of use.
-Shift + left click is often bound to something targetable, like shield charge
-T is bound to 'target next enemy' so that I can hit it with my index finger instead of stretching my pinky to hit Tab
-Toggles go up on the third bar, and usually get turned on when I log in, then ignored.

And that's pretty much my entire set up, for now. I'm considering adding more (the numpad, perhaps?) for when I play Masterminds, but for all other AT's, this set-up works pretty damn well for me.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, one more thing. Middle-click. A slightly obscure button, it's what registers when you press down on a mouse's center scroll wheel. I bind that to auto-run, to save my aching fingers from holding the E key all the time.

Okay, so the amount of +acc, Kismet, etc. available through IO's may Targeting Drone moot at the high end / post 50, but I'm one of those guys who has never even MADE it to 50.

What about all the time I'm gonna spend in the 20-40 level range, where I don't have epics or the time/patience/money for IO's?

Hey guys, wondering if you can check my numbers on this:

Archery has +15% accuracy across the board. Targeting Drone gives +13% to-hit un-enhanced.

75% base + 13% = 83% to-hit

.83 * 1.15 = .9545 or about 95% chance to hit, which is the cap (against even-con minions, I know).

So, does this mean that with one or two to-hit enhancers in Targeting Drone, an Archery/Devices blaster can completely skip slotting accuracy in their attacks if not facing really high-level enemies? I'm thinking mostly PvE for this, not PvP.

Hi guys. I'm really enjoying my Fire/Thermal right now. I've got a pretty good idea of what my team-oriented build goals are, but I'm also putting together my secondary build for the times when I'm soloing.

In my solo build, I'm taking all or almost all of the Fire Control powers (possibly skipping Smoke, Cinders, and/or Bonfire), but very few of the Thermal powers (skipping the shields, rez, Thaw, and single-target heal). I just hit 16 today, and realized I'm running out of good powers to take and was hoping I could get some advice on pool powers.

I'm already taking the Fitness pool, and the Flying pool for concept and Air Superiority (love that attack for filling out ST attack chain on controllers). What other two pools would most benefit/complement this build, and how? Any unusual build ideas that can be done when you've got this many free power picks to spend on pools?

Other points:
-No pvp
-Minimal IO's until the 30's/40's most likely
-Endgame build isn't really useful here, I need leveling advice
-Definitely taking Forge to support my Imps. Are any of the other Thermal buffs worth it if you're only going to have Imps to put 'em on? What about Leadership?

Assuming money is not an issue and you can always get the recipes/salvage you need, what's the lowest level at which you could get the ~50-60% global recharge needed for perma-dom?

I'm currently working on leveling a Plant/Fire, and planing out that build in MIDS it looks like I can get that much recharge by level 40 without gimping the rest of my build *too* much. What I'd like to know is if it can be done sooner, and how.

So, I'm leveling a Kin/Sonic, having fun. I'm clear already on what I'm taking or not from Kin/, but I'm not totally sure on /Sonic. Shriek and Scream (the tier 1 and 2 ST blasts) are great, but Howl feels underwhelming. Is howl skippable? Which /Sonic powers are worth taking, considering both pre- and post-Fulcrum Shift?

I figure AOE damage becomes a bigger deal once you have FS, but before that, does it make sense to only take ST blasts and focus on quick kills that way?

EDIT: To be clear, this is a SOLO character. I guess I put it in the title but forgot to mention it in the post.

Okay, ended up deciding to go for /Dark after reading some other threads. Thanks guys!

I've wanted to run a serious Stormie for a while now, and I'm determined to finally play something non-melee into the high levels for once. The characters I tend to stay most committed to, though, are ones that solo very well, and the new vigilance mechanic is giving me a little more hope of doing that with a defender.

So, what secondary pairs well with Storm for a primarily solo-ing defender?

Also, aside from the obvious +def/+recharge IO building strategies out there, are there any significant concerns in slotting/IO'ing Storm? Or is it all just 'the usual'?

I always seem to fill up on salvage/recipies/enhancements in the middle of any moderate to large size mission whenever I solo on x3 or higher. Anybody got any tricks or tips to help me not have to run to the store/WW/BM so often?

I don't have any idea what might be the cause of this, but on all my characters (at least on Virtue, where I play most), clicking on "post" or "get" or dragging salvage to the storage tab at Wentworth's seems to have about a 1 in 4 chance of actually working. Most of the time, it appears to work, and then reverts about 2-5 seconds later. I do not get any message in my chat log except for the normal one when it actually works.

Anybody know what's up with this?

So, been messing around with a PB and decided to try these two macros:

/macro Nova "powexectoggleon Bright Nova$$gototrayalt 9"
(switches to nova form and sets my second tray to tray 9)

and

/macro Human1 "powexectoggleoff Bright Nova$$gototrayalt 2$$powexecname Shining Shield"
(takes me back to human, sets my second tray to tray 2, and turns on my Shining Shield toggle)

For some reason, when I log in, the second macro always seems to have been truncated such that the last item "$$powexecname Shining Shield" is missing. I can go back and add it again, and it works, but multiple times now it's lost that part again after I've logged off and back in.

Anybody know what's going on?

There's a line in the kheldian description during character creation that says they take more damage than normal, but I can't find any other info about this or even any other references to it.

Do kheldians take extra damage? How much? To what degree is this offset by human-form shields and dwarf-form? Was this changed at some point and just left in the description?

How much of a waste it is to take all of them depends on a lot of factors. Do you want to do more aoe or single target damage? How much +recharge do you have? Do you care about having a full attack chain? How much time can you fill in-between attacks with casting stuff from your secondary?

Unfortunately, support types just don't have it as easy as melee/blasters who can just build an attack chain and chuck out most of the attacks that aren't part of the chain. A lot of it is going to be by feel and personal preference.

That said, one thing to look at is Damage per Activation (DPA). That is, the damage of the power divided by it's activation/animation time. The powers with the highest DPA will be the most efficient damage output per second assuming you never sit waiting for powers to recharge and always have something to click. If you have gaps, though, recharge rates become more of a factor.

Personally I would consider Suppressive Fire and Petrifying Gaze to be fairly skipable. Obviously, if you take one, you'd like the other to stack the holds, but neither has that long of a hold on them, and let's be honest, you're not a controller or dominator. Locking down a single boss in group play isn't worth the attention and time compared to dealing more damage and using more of your other Dark debuffs, especially the aoe debuffs.

Another thing I think, just in general when looking for skipable powers: find that one power that sits on your bar fully recharged. The one you think "huh, I haven't used that in a few minutes, I should fire it off" or "I'm not using that one 'cause I don't want to be stuck with it recharging in an emergency" or "I only have that power as a back-up in case this specific bad situation comes up, otherwise I don't need it." That's the one you probably want to drop. Powers you're not using aren't needed (usually).

I've got a Archery/Dark Miasma corruptor I'm playing right now, designed as an evil fairy. Anyway, since I'm planning to run swift and hover most of the time, I was wondering if Shadow Fall and similar auras still work properly if I'm over my allies heads. Obviously, I'd need to be low enough, but I was a little worried by the very planar graphics most of these seem to have.

tl;dr; are PBAOE auras spherical?

It's pretty much exactly the same thing.

The only downside to the brute version is that Lightening Rod has funky mechanics based on a pseudopet which affects it's damage cap. So, LR won't do quite as much damage on a Brute as it would on a Scrapper, but the difference is small enough that it doesn't damage the set as a whole that much.

One big advantage to the Brute is his higher +resist cap. (Scrapper is 75%, brute is 90%). This means a brute with all the shields + Grounded can easily hit the cap and have 90% energy resist by level 25, which makes certain enemy groups just laughably easy.

Mine on test was 'Two-Shot'

Saw a nice western style lady called 'Calamity Jane'

What reliable sources of resistance are there besides brute/tank/scrapper/stalker powers and Toughness that a character can pick up to protect himself?

It seems like defense has it way easier than resist in terms of stacking. Weave, Manuevers, CJ, and Stealth all add +def(all), whereas Tough is the only +resist pool power, and that only for S/L. And is it just me, or is +resist almost non-existant among IO sets?

Playing around with an Elec/Elec brute, and getting good aoe damage seems fairly straightforward (Thunderstrike, Chain Induction, Lightening Rod, Build Up, the damage aura, etc.). However, I'm having trouble figuring out how to go about building a relatively efficient single-target attack chain. Yes, I know that's not what Elec is good at. I'd just like to not take forever finishing off the last boss or two in a large spawn.

A few questions along these lines:
-Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, and Jacob's Ladder - Which ones to take? Pros/Cons of different combinations?
-Boxing as a filler, perhaps? I want toughness at some point anyway.
-Is Chain Induction "worth" using against a single target? It's damage is comparable to Havoc punch, but CI has shorter activation and way higher Endurance cost.
-Same question for Thunderstrike, although that seems much more clearly 'overpriced' in terms of End cost and activation time than CI.
-If I've got Lightening Reflexes and Hasten up most of the time, do I need to slot any recharge in the faster attack powers at all?

Note that I'm only around level 20 with this guy right now. IO advice is nice, but I'd like to know how you'd approach this while leveling, when set bonuses are much less of a factor.

Or am I going about this all wrong, and just spamming aoe even against one target is the way to go?