ClawsandEffect

A couple others have already answered the question.

What it comes down to is, just about every signature character has a costume piece that is unique to them, and we will likely never gain access to it.

Statesman's faceplate (because it's not really a full helm), Recluse's helmet, Synapse's wristbands, Manticore's mask, Ghost Widow's hair, most of Mako's body, Scirocco's sword and headdress, and so on and so forth.

The unique pieces are only seen on the signature characters and nowhere else. (Statesman also has a unique cape)

Nope.

Reverse Build Up and Assassin's Blaze.

ALL stalker primaries get their powers in this order: AS at 6, Build Up at 8, Placate at 12. So, your Placate is in the right spot, but your BU and AS are backwards.

Other than that it looks alright. I'd rather see them remove Breath of Fire and frontload Incinerate's damage like they did with Midnight Grasp though.

It's correct.

The problem arose with pet AI. If you buffed a pet's recharge it screwed up the way it decides what power to use.

A MM pet will ALWAYS use it's best power if it's recharged, and if it's almost recharged it will wait until it is and not use anything else. Normally, the recharge is long enough that it will use other powers while it's waiting for it's best one to recharge. But, if you buff it's recharge enough, suddenly it's best power is considered "almost recharged" immediately after it uses it, so it will wait until it is and use it again.

End result: You have a bunch of Thugs MMs walking around with their Bruisers spamming nothing other than Hand Clap (which counts as it's "best" power because it is conferred by the second pet buff)

I could be mistaken on exactly how it worked, but the Bruisers spamming nothing but Hand Clap was observable and repeatable. Other pets did the same thing, but it wasn't as bad because at least their "best power" did damage.

That's not a cut and dried answer. It depends very much on exactly how dependent on set bonuses your build is.

Some builds can exemp with 50 IOs and not even notice much difference. Other builds quickly become crippled.

Examples:

Most Willpower characters won't be hurt too much, they are plenty strong on SOs, so set bonuses are just nice add-ons.

A Fire/Rad controller could be badly hurt by it if it is dependent on recovery bonuses in level 50 sets to have enough end to run Hot Feet/Choking Cloud (the main reason to roll a Fire/Rad in the first place)

I cannot emphasize enough how WRONG this is.

MoG is arguably the most important power in Regeneration now. It is Regen's ONLY mitigation for alpha strikes. If you know you're going to take a beating, pop MoG before you jump in. It was changed so it only lasts 15 seconds, but it no longer crashes your HP and you can still heal while it is active. There are things that can and WILL kill a Regen before you can react with a heal, if you don't have MoG in your build, you will have to deal with that happening quite a bit.

On Regen, you want every power except the rez.

Instant Healing isn't a toggle anymore, it is now an extremely long recharge click power, so you don't have insane levels of regeneration available full time.

When slotting IO sets, focus on recharge, recharge, recharge, some defense, and recharge. This is obtained through set bonuses. Basically, any group of Invention Origin enhancements that have a special name (like Kinetic Combat or Crushing Impact) will give you bonuses to your character depending on how many of them you have slotted in a given power (yes, they all have to be in the same power to get the bonus)

This won't be a direct port. 3 powers will be replaced before blasters get it. Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall will be replaced because they exist in blaster Soul Mastery and they won't allow us to double up on them.

Life Drain will likely be replaced because I think it's unlikely that blasters will get a true self-heal in a primary power set.

Life Drain should, in my opinion, be replaced with a harder hitting tier 3 single target attack (along the lines of Blaze, Shout, Cosmic Burst, Power Burst, etc.)

Replace Night Fall with Aim, Tenebrous Tentacles with Dark Obliteration, and increase the damage on Torrent and change it from knockback to knockdown.


I hope you're not serious. If you are, remind me not to team with you.

I'll cover them as best I can.

Fire/Fire blaster: I don't know if you noticed or not, but Defiance got a HUGE buff a while back. Instead of buffing your damage as you get closer to death, you now get more damage basedon how many attacks you fire in a short amount of time. You can also now fire your first two primary and first secondary powers while mezzed.

Oh, and they changed the animation for Flares, it's very much worth taking now with a 1 second animation time.

Other than those points, a Fire/Fire blaster plays pretty much how it always did.

Invuln/Fire tank: Invuln got a buff a while back too. The resistance passives are now 10% base instead of 7.5% base. Unyielding no longer debuffs your defense, and Invincibility gives you more benefit from smaller groups of enemies.

Don't think Fire Melee has been changed much.

Fire/Energy tank: Energy Transfer got a slight nerf. To hear people talk the power got gutted, but in reality, it deals the same damage, just with a longer activation time.

Fiery Aura got a slight buff. healing Flames recharges faster and heals for more (it is now the second best self heal in the game after Dark Regeneration). Fiery Embrace went from a straight damage buff to applying Fire damage to all your attacks for 30 seconds. Temperature Protection got some slow resistance added. Fiery Aura is still the squishiest tanker though, and your choice of Energy Melee doesn't really give you any AoE at all.

In my opinion, your Fire/Energy tank is probably the weakest in your roster.

Ice/Ice: Not sure what changes, if any, have occurred here. Except Hibernate, you are now limited to only being able to use it every 60 seconds, regardless of how fast you have it recharging. But, if you need Hibernate more often than once a minute you have bigger problems.

Still one of the best agro holders in the game.

Broadsword/Regen scrapper: This combo can be very squishy, or insanely tough, depending on how it is built. Parry is a MUST for this combo. Regen did get a few nerfs, but nothing earth shattering. If you get enough defense rocking you can live through most anything.

Dark/Dark scrapper: This one got some much needed changes to Dark Melee. I'll elaborate. Siphon Life is now your second hardest hitting attack, and Midnight Grasp now deals most of it's damage up front with a DoT afterward. Soul Drain now gives you a larger boost from the first enemy, and slightly less boost for each additional enemy (it roughly evens out in the end)

Dark Armor hasn't changed too much, but I don't know what did or didn't change since you played last.

Rad/Psi defender: Nothing much has changed here at all, it should be more or less how you remember it.

I use the military assault rifle model. It can be used to account for everything except the flamethrower.

I rationalized it as being a .45 caliber assault rifle, because a .45 caliber gun can be chambered to fire a .410 shotgun shell. (and the Thompson submachine gun was .45 caliber, so the full auto is plausible)

That model also has a grenade launcher slung under the barrel, which can rationalize the M30 grenade and the beanbag.

Isn't that the Jade Spider from one of the Ouroboros TFs?

I'm a "Whatever I feel like doing at the time-er".

I don't really have any set preferences, my playtime is split between A) Whatever I feel like doing, and B) whatever happens to be starting when I log in.

The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but if I don't feel like doing something I'll pass on it, even if it's the only thing being started.

The only way I will for sure be quitting is if they make it so F2P is the ONLY option and everyone has to pay an additional fee for things we all currently get for free (like new zones, new powersets, etc.)

If they introduce F2P as an option alongside subscriptions, well, I'll probably be annoyed at all the badly behaving people who inevitably flock to free games so they can troll people and in general be a bunch of tools, but I doubt I would quit over it.

My opinion is that I think F2P is a bad idea for this game, but my decision as to whether I would continue to play would hinge on exactly how it's implemented, if it indeed goes that way.

Zwillinger has already confirmed that the endurance cost of the AoE buffs is remaining the same as it was when they were single target.

Someone quoted his exact response earlier in the thread. So it's a huge overall buff.

On this character, I would keep Body mastery -OR- Go villain side and back like I mentioned to pick up Soul Mastery.

Reason I recommend against Dark Mastery: Dark Mastery's AoEs are all cones, meaning you will have to jump OUT of a spawn to get the best use out of them. Being Willpower, you want to stay right in the middle of that spawn.

If you are looking for AoEs, you want to try and look for PBAoEs or Targeted AoEs with circular detonations. That way you can stay in the middle of the spawn and use them without having to jump around to position cones.

I did the same, I suggested Blaze Mastery for more AoE, but if he wants to stick with his concept it isn't a must take pool by any means.

Yes, wonderful idea, make it completely impossible for low damage characters to solo anything without Incarnate powers. THAT will win people over.

Can you imagine how pissed Ice and Earth controllers would be if you increased the HP of enemies? It takes long enough to kill anything with those sets already, why would you want to make it take even LONGER?!

Incarnate abilities were designed to make us more powerful. If you return things to the status quo by increasing NPC HP, all you are doing is penalizing those players who DON'T have Incarnate powers (there are a lot of them).

If you are feeling too powerful, increase the difficulty of your missions. Don't call for a nerf that will make things harder for others when you can fix the issue yourself without changing anything about the game.