Caesar_Augustus

Sorry, if this has been covered or this is the wrong forum for it, but it seems apropos.

Is there any video game that you've played with more ability to create varied looking characters, in terms of being able to say make fantasy/medieval, sci-fi,superhero,etc... style characters ?

I'm not asking because I'm unhappy, I just like using the costume designer to make designs for characters for pen and paper rpgs and if there's something better with more utility I'm more than happy to hear it. I think this is pretty great for what I use it for, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the variety of fashions for a modern to cyberpunk era character.
The new day job stuff helps on this a bit, but I guess I'm frustrated at the lack of variety for the trench coat style costume. There is a drop down for it but the basic leather one is all you get.

thoughts ? rants ? flame ? assistance ?

Great address, way to keep blowing our socks off. People are still reeling with all of the I12 stuff that they don't even hands their on yet and you go and do this ...

I knew creating a user generated content aspect to the game you'll be leaping the mmorpg experience forward beyond anything I've heard of in development let alone being added to a pre-existing game.

If you don't use that opportunity to re-market the hell out of this game it would be a crime.

So, Aeon with influence/help from someone else (I'm thinking Nemesis) goes back and changes time creating an alternate time-line (or who knows maybe I10 we all wake up in a totally different world).

The Recluse of that timeline has figured this out and recruits Manticore with plans to revert the timeline so he does at least control the rogue isles.

The rebels are 5th columnists and they've got or are onto something that would allow recluse to do his own timeline fix.

I don't know. I'd love it if they could truly do a whole paradigm shift and arachnos gets replaced on the rogue isles all of the contacts in paragon are effectively replaced as well.
We maybe get a reworked STF and Grandville zone.
It's a whole new mission/contact system with newspapers and police scanners still present.
Both tutorial sections are redone.
The whole thing lasts until issue 11 when someone successfully reverts things.

Oh, yeah. not so much.
Some of this is possible, but probably not the big stuff.

Gotta say, I look forward to I9, and I10 , but the comment about probably no new ATs makes me sad.
I really truly want my villain side Khelds.
and server transfers.
and new power sets for tankers (and I guess scrappers).
and for doms...
and any/more missions for the SG/VG mission computers.
and more/revamped enemy groups.
and more mission map tilesets. That university map would be a nice start.
and more outdoor instanced maps.
and more options for costume piece texture/reflectivity.
Oh the list goes on and on.

Very nice guide.
I have a lvl 50 ill/storm myself and loved the ride.

Some comments on hurricane usage.
Meleers will often grit their teeth when they see a stormer join their team, the result of having seen too many bad stormer or just because their priorites and yours aren't totally the same.
The primary reason for their dislike is bad usage of hurricane.
You mention that using it to force enemies into a corner is a substantial goal for this power and I totally concur. I would say that having superspeed can make your melee teammate love you with this power when you are able to round up and keep large spawns pinned in a small space for them to just go crazy on them. In short hurricane can make you loved or hated by melee-ers rarely anything in the middle.

I see that you weren't inclined to add in a section on the epic/auxiliary pools and their effects to this build.
These are my thoughts and experiences with them feel free to ignore completely.

I have tried psionic, power and fire mastery. Perhaps others could comment on ice mastery, or i'll stop being lazy and copy to test and test it.

Psionic was my first and i would say most useful in my run from 41-50 than power or ice would have been, but that is of course debatable.

I chose psi for 2 reasons. Indomitable will provided substantial mez protection periods when slotted for recharge w' hasten and mind over body added psi/lethal/smash damage resistance which with steamy mist meant that the only two damage types unresisted were neg. energy and toxic. I found myself to be a fairly agressive ill/stormer and would from time to time find myself in the middle of the scrum and these additional defenses proved quite helpful. Also with the prevalence of status effects many of them AOE in the late game the mez protection was invaluable.
Also, as an illusionist i found it particularly galling to be flashed or blinded when fighting carnies.
Psionic tornado is an adequate aoe attack for use with the limited forms of group containment ill/storm is able to generate (ie. thunderclap and flash). It's knockup effect is respectable as a minor control effect. The downsides to it were long animation time, long recharge, lowish damage, and high endurance cost. Overall i found it of limited value.
Mental blast esp. since it has been tuned up for animation/activation time is not bad at all though, it's damage is not spectacular but healthy. I would assume it has a bit more value in PvP.
One other comment is that the effect for mind over body of subtle pinkish rings around your character is not exactly my cup of tea.

Now there is definitely something to be said for power boost, the primary reason for this build that i tried out power mastery.
Conserve power was a nice addition for big summoning fests but i did not feel was overall that necessary. Power blast is a nice attack. It does pretty good damage and is handy for aiding in taking down anything under containment with alternating Spectral wounds and Power blast.
Its recharge as with all the aux/epics is a little longer than you'd like but slotted 2acc/3dmg/1rchrg it's not too shabby.
Temp Invulnerabilty makes a nice add on for resistance to smashing lethal and it looks better than mind over body.
For my character at 50 though i skipped this power as between conserve power, power blast and the 4th tier power boost I didn't really have the slots to make this worthwhile and i wanted the other 3 more.
Power boost, very good power.
Its quite a rush to throw PAs hit this then freezing rain and one of the aoe mezs.
Now I'm not totally clear on whether or not freezing rain gets full benefit from the boost but one would think/hope so.
As I said I only specced into this pool at 50 and I don't do a lot of adventuring since then.

Fire mastery is a common choice among other controllers because of fireball on a spawn under containment. we don't have as many options for that sort of thing and as a result I don't feel that we benefit from this power as much. Fire shield looks coolest of all the aux/epic shield available to us imo, but I didn't feel it necessary with already having fire resistance in steamy mist.
The S/L resist is nice but not that critical depending on play style. Consume is a handy feature in that if you're playing ill/storm in a very agressive manner you're running through endurance quickly, this can help take care of that. Particulary easy if you run into a group under the effects of freezing rain. It will be more likely to hit more of them and will do more damage.
Fire blast is a good healthy damage attack that benefits nicely from containment, alternating between spectral wounds and this does away with foes quickly.

Ice mastery is a pretty good thematic match for your power sets. I can see hibernate being a good choice if you choose to pvp, allowing you to remain untouchable while your various pets and pseudo pets do their thing. Ice blast nice secondary slow effect, decent damage. Frozen armor plugs the S/L gap in your resistances and boosts fire and cold resist. You are however a big ice cube looking person at that point.
Ice Storm is a very nice addition to an Ill/storm arsenal for big aoe damage. An ideal setup would be, i would thin,k PA, pause, flash, freezing rain, ice storm. This could potentially depending on containment issues due massive damage as freezing rain is already debuffing defense and resistance, and the slows would stack. Could potentially make large groups just melt... so to speak.

Overall for Ill/Strm I would say Psi mastery If you despise being held and like to have a very full set of resistances.
Ice mastery is probably one of your best choices if you prefer to PvP or if in PvE you like doing a lot of AOE damage in the late game.
Power Mastery is quite helpful for hami raids.
Fire master isn't as beneficial to us as to other controller primaries.

Can't you delete the power ?

i'll concede that some people can't win these.
I don't understand it myself. I'm not the best player out there i'm quite quite sure. I don't power build that i'm aware of.

Still i find these fun, relatively easy (when set to the lowest difficulty and solo) and quite a hoot. The temp powers gained through them make the run up to a travel power such a non-issue. I hope these aren't changed too horribly and i suppose i can just up my difficulty if the whole thing gets made easier.

I think the increased perception on street mobs is a mistake that should be fixed no doubt about it, but it hasn't seriously effected me so far.

I'll grant that in their way mayhems are whole different beast and sort of more fun as you can destroy everything (sorta).

These are much much more in line with the reactive hero/proactive villian philosophy of the game (and most comics).

Mayhems make me revel in destruction, SGMs make me run like mad to save the city. I like both of those feelings.

I will comment once again though you need only defeat the villians termed looters and leave those termed robbers to have unlimited time in the whole mission. An oversite that i think needs to be corrected for the design to work as intended.

Did the brickstown SGM last night again solo.
I will agree with those that say the tsoo spawns are not as one would expect or want them to be.
Only a few ancestor spirits don't think i saw any sorcerors. Tons of ink men that debuff speed and such.
Worst worst worst thing though is the boss/lt version of boss that throws fear. What are you supposed to do to that ?
My scrapper could take the beating with my occasional chance to hit back but i doubt a squishie could.
I still like SGMs though and i still think they're overall fairly easy if you want them to be and really tough if you want that, oh and fun.

SGMs like Mayhems are terrible with a team.

I ran the brickstown SGM last night twice.
First as a duo 1 MA/regen scrapper and 1 storm/psi defender.
We succeeded easily in the main goal but as i was trying to teach the defender about SGMs all was sort of lost when he clicked out after we defeated the bank robbers.
I think we could have cruised most of the other side missions but who knows.

Second try was in a trio, we picked up a fire/kin troller several levels below us. This again we succeeded in the main mission of stoppign the bank robbery.
In this one however neither of the squishier classes could handle the attention they kept getting from long ranged perception.
We did manage to get to the side mission of rescuing a bunch of hosties in a jewelry store i think it was. This was fine until we hit the boss spawn. Here we get about 6 ink men siphoning my speed (the kin was a huge help here) but it all fell apart when the boss hits me with terrorize or something like it. they all kill the three of us. I come back with the troller (the defender again accidentally clicked out) we finish off the boss spawn but under the efffects of terror again it takes all the time i have left and apparently there's a mob somewhere still in the store so we're booted.
All in all i still think i could have done this mission no problem solo.
Will try it again today.

Ah , just a suggestion.
Go into the bank, do not engage the mobs there. stand at the door and wait. When the robbers come immob them and widdle them away. After that go for (or don't if you want unlimited time) the spawn that's just standing in the bank.

You do have to let them see you I think without any stealth on for a sec so they'll latch on to you.
That's the only problem i've ever had with them not joining me.
Though honestly their help after the jail is a very mixed blessing.

[ QUOTE ]

I nearly soloed my empath to 50...so I'd like to think it's at least a half-competent build. And I raided my SG vault and filled my tray with tier-three inspirations. And I fired my Eye of the Magus. And i still died against an even-con lieutenant (yellow). Top that off with the fact that my AOE's don't seem to matter at all. The villains scatter, and each runs off to the getaway car in a different direction. It's not fun. And if I can't cut *that*...well, maybe I need to decrease my difficulty below heroic somehow.
*shrugs*


[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm, now i have to admit that really is strange to me.
I guess i can see that an Emp really doesn't have too much to help yourself against an enemy offensively in the primary, but wow. That's pretty harsh.
What zoned SGM ? I'll have to take a look.
I've never had a problem with the robbers not aggroing on me (and i don't even have a tank). I do have to repeatedly hit them as the aggro does fade over time.

That does sound bad though.

As an afterthought, yes if your build doesn't give you enough oomf offense to fight a super powered Lt. which as far i can tell is what a solo heroic setting gives you than yeah it's hard, but if you can't take an lt. even with inspirations and such...
I understand people can build anyway they want and nothing is wrong with a build (though 6 slotting rest comes to mind) anyway yes there are probably builds that can't solo and can't solo these, but on the other hand you don't actually have to take them i believe the broker/cop offers for you to pass on them.

Anyway, to me with plenty of non super solo-ers in my stable of toons i love these and mayhems, they're fun, exciting different, challenging.

As for robbers getting away i've found they're all more than happy to aggro on me if i throw an aoe or hit each individually which is what i always do. They're much more excited about trying to kill me than getting away.

It's not everyone's cup of tea i'd imagine but not every mission will be and i'd hate to see these made so easy people can solo them on invincible with no iota of challenge.

Cheers

While i agree with you about the perception on street mobs needign to be put back in line i just can't agree on the these are too difficult side. They're tough to be sure.
From my villian side experience with mayhems i have a few rules for the mayhems that i follow on the SGM. Set difficulty to heroic, and only solo them.
That said i haven't run the peregrine one yet and it does sound bad having malta and circus there.

It's a new beast as far as missions go and i honestly wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't ever run one on an 8 man team or on a difficulty above heroic.

To my mind it's sort of nice having a mission type where if i set it to invincible i'm going to have a damn good chance of failing.

Cheers

When you get the vandals are trashing the city , if you're quick you can actually arrive well in advance of them. best to wait for them or get some altitude to see where they're coming from and intercept them.

There should be if it follows Villain side, fewer side missions the lower lvl the safeguard mission is. There are sets to this depending on your lvl so you should bascially get one safeguard for every normal city zone (though i'd assume they're only going to cover ther original primary zones and peregrine).

Cheers

I posted about this elsewhere but in safeguard missions the typical street spawns quite ignore stealth and seem to have increased perception range.

So,
Here are some issues i've found since I8 went live.
I've run about 6 safeguards so far and while i love them there are some problems.
First issue. On my Defender with Shadowfall in the KR map the standard clock spawns on the street not only ignore my stealth but appear to have a longer detection range than normal.
That's somewhat annoying.

Second issue, I run straight to the bank and bypass the spawns of skulls standing about not activelly robbing the bank. I go and stop the main villain and their spawn. Now at this point unless i go back and finish off the spawns in the bank not doing anything i now have unlimited time to go and explore the map do side missions etc. Also no mobs of baddies attacking the environment will spawn.

Finally when i go and clear the non robbers at the bank the timer starts and the environment attackers spawn but any side quests done previously don't add their time to my timer.
I would think as unlikely as it might be a team might be able to run a side mission and the bank at the same time and it would be a bit of bad if the side mission's effort didn't add to the timer just because it completed before the bank mission.

Overall, i'm loving them though.

Cheers

I like the guide,
I have some disagreements but nothing too terrible.

This is or can be the chaos bringer and I played it as such definitely. It may sound strange but if your teams can get used to it there is a great deal of control in that chaos.
Also, consider how many seperate sources of damage pets/pseudo pets you can put out at once it really is staggering.

As to hurricane, a very handy way to deal with the scatter produced by many of the storm effects is to have superspeed up and basically just corral all the mobs that get to running, being tossed about like ragdolls. I found tanks, scrappers and aoe blasters loved me for this. I'ts a very handy solo tool. big bad boss. run into him, maybe he's knocked down maybe he's not but he's sure not hitting me much.

I've heard so much talk of thunder clap being bad for accuracy but I'm certain at one point it was an auto hit and then that can toned down but it was still at a very very high inherent accuracy.
I had the thing slotted with 1 acc SO for a very very long time and it never seemed to fail me much. It's also a super cool visual and sound effect. I've heard that it's get a very high toggle dropping effect if you're into that sort of thing.

tornado is very handy against AVs. it won't confuse them it may help you knock them down on occasion and it basically just sits on them. Generally, they try to get away from it but are so slowed (by my other powers) that they can't . I've used it to great effect, I think. AVs running away in ultra slo-mo generally aren't killing anyone.

Flash is to me almost worthless for crowd control. I kept it, but I only use it to get mag on bosses.

Lastly, I went with the psi epic armor giving me resistance of tolerable to excellent against everything but toxic i believe (when combined with steamy mists) and the mez protection clickie giving me long periods of relatively mez free life (nice when fighting carnies). Psi tornado is pretty bad but when you combine it with the real tornado and freezing rain I've knocked down AVs on semi-regular basis.
Better off though taking the crappy psi blast just because you can really use another single target blast (even if it's bad).

Here's how i look at my control options with this toon.
Decoys can occupy a whole group for the time that they're up if no one is shooting at the group.
tornado can completey frack up an entire group on it's own. with me only getting shot at occasionally by them.
hurricane can be used to knock down and move almost anyone i want almost anywhere i want. gust of wind helps with this a little.

the terror pet can soft lock almost an entire group on it's own.

freezing rain can cause an entire group to stop shooting at me for the most part while they slowly run out of it often falling. (this is my first choice of groups to destroy as they're taking extra damage).

The flash can lock down most of a large group bosses excepted.
my single target hold handling at least 1 of those.

thunderclap on the minions (especially in the high game where some of these minions are a real drag, like sappers) will take a lot of the wind out of an entire group (so to speak).

Then there's my phantasm and lightning storm diligently blasting the heck out of people.

It's crazy and the amount of soft control comes in handy as I can aggro many many extra groups if I'm not careful with so many mindlessy aggressive pets/pseudo pets out.
1 thing to note is the phantasm is a little too happy to sit at max range and plink people so i generally have to convince him to get closer to use his cone attack (recall friend is one way of doing this).

It's a strong build. I can't solo an even lvl AV by myself but I can certainly stand there with them for an awfully long time with little or no danger to my self.

You really do have to be able to manage the chaos though.


Cheers

this may sound dumb, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use the psionic activator in the mission with aurora borealis, was i supposed to have used it against the pods ?

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but has anyone been able to use non standard characters in their Toon Name ?

Cheers

Questions.
So, I hear conflicting things about this and there are a couple of things I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.
First things first.
Can controllers hold the hydra head through the force field now ?
Secondly, what are the uses of the thermite canons I see mentioned ? I see that you're supposed to use the particle canons to "arrest" the hydra head, so....

My current group would be a fire/ice tank, a DM/regen scrap, a fire rad troller, and an ill/storm troller.
Does that sound workable ?
How often does the the hydra head throw it's big killer attack ?
Assuming that the head cannot be perma-held now and that the force field generators need to be taken out repeatedly, will the head be firing at ppl while we're doing this ?

I think that's all I've got for now.

Cheers

Just wanted to say these powersets together are a little gem of defenderdom.
I started a Rad/Dark about two weeks ago and without playing like a madman I've made lvl 23 without any undue effort on my part.
I can solo quite nicely, but in teams ... man oh man do I make things easy.
No one seems to notice per se, but there is something to be said about every mob we fight being immobilized, constantly taking damage, slow, and debuffed everywhich way.
Throw in the AMs I'm constantly shooting at everyone and the occasional heal.
It's a lot of fun and I have to say seeing your TT tentacles surrounded by several types of green smoky glows coming off the floor and you truly feel like the unstoppable instrument of Cthulhu and the other old ones, but in a heroic not evil way

Cheers,
J

TY very much that was quite helpful.
The issue comes in because I'm looking at possible ways of slotting hurricane and steamy mist and wondered what sort of balance to strike on the -acc vs the +defs.
I know the -acc will only effect those close with this power and the inherent knockback sort of makes that less helpful.
Still wish there was a way to enhance the range reduction on the thing ... seems like I'm constanlty gettign out of ranges vs storm shamans where as they don't seem to get it on me.

oh well.

Cheers

I don't know if this is the place to ask this or not, but...
So, I've been thinking a lot about acc debuffs vs. defense buffs lately before I make my next defender.
The question I have goes something like this...
is an -acc the same as +def ?
I'm thinking not in as much as when fighting a different lvl opponent your +def is effected by the lvl difference between you and the enemy while -acc isnt ?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thx
Machina Archana lvl31 FF/DB virtue
Machina Diabola lvl28 Ill/SS virtue