Crysys

Get Mace Mastery like everyone else. Great +DEF and none of that blockhead stuff. Just a faint dark purple glow.

And Soul Drain is available to Dom's now as PPP? Its been a long time since I had a toon with Soul Mastery, but back then a Dom couldn't get that power (only available to Corrs).

I will be surprised if we see a MIDS update for quite awhile. They have ATO's, multiple new power sets and a host of power changes to update.

While YMMV, I've always found Ranged and Energy defense to be superior than S/L on a Corrupter build. Could just be a playstyle choice I guess but S/L doesn't seem to provide as much protection in the end-game content.

/Time or /Dark seem to make the most sense to me. /Time because of all the +DEF, a heal and it works best if you are in melee (which your pets will be as well). /Dark for a lot of the same reasons, although you can easily play that at range if you prefer a more "survey the battlefield" kind of playstyle. I'm also guessing Fluffy will heal the beasts, but not sure about that.

Personally, I'm making one of each, PL both to 38-40 and then keep the one that plays better. 6 hours of investment so why not?

Just hit 45 on my Fire/Dark controller (PL'd to 38 this morning after a couple cave runs).

I'm really not digging it as much as I thought I would. It plays like a safer Fire/Kin but with far less damage output. My Dark/Fire Dominator, on the other hand...wowza.

I always find myself wanting to play a Controller, but inevitably find the playstyle of anything other than Ill/Rad or Fire/Kin to be just too slow for my personal tastes. Decent pairing, however...just sort of 'meh.'

Because it's yet one more bullet in the gun pointed against the Blaster AT. Those who love blasters are pretty outspoken that the AT underperforms vs everything else and allegedly the devs have acknowledged this via data mining. So I'm assuming that's part of the sadness.

Wasn't addressed before going live. Maybe you'll see the changes in a patch or six but for now, you get what you got.

Had we gotten Tigers, I'm pretty sure we'd be overrun with Mowgli/Jungle Book tributes.

No not rejecting reality, but i think you may be privy to more data than I am.

I've not seen anything from the datamining that stated empirically that "Blasters that are mezzed die more often than their counterparts who are mezzed where the mezz was categorically responsible for the summary loss of health leading to defeat as it a) directly preceded defeat of the character, b) no powers were used by mezzed character during the mezzed state indicating a disabled player ** (see below) and c) magnitude of, and resistance to, said mezz was equal for both." Was that, indeed, the finding? That would make me question my experiences.

I'm saying that my experiences with being mezzed don't directly relate to my mortality when playing a number of "squishy" AT's. And I've not seen anything that supports that particular theory as fact. If I'm wrong, I would very much like to hear the findings and I suspect that if anyone could point me to them, it would be you. And in this game, that which doesn't kill me doesn't really hurt my rewards when teamed. Progression remains equal until an AT is defeated and incurs debt. And I've at least a few blasters at 50 that don't have their first debt badge, while I've many controllers and corrupters that had the first two by 40.....but thats just an anecdote.

My belief is that such data mining was focused on mortality rates of the various AT's and not causality of specific instances of mortality. If it was segmented out further, then I've not seen/heard about it. So I believe its possible that both my experiences, and the datamining performed, are both accurate representations of reality. It just depends on the focus on causality versus outcome.

**Experience would tell me that since Defiance was changed, my blaster mortality actually improved significantly as most of the mezzers I meet can be mitigated using Defiance-enabled attacks. Those that can't...well, they could have killed me without mezzing me so not sure that matters. And determining "death from damage dealt by mezzer" versus "death from other critters working with the mezzer" is beyond my meager ability to recall.

I'm selling the following for 100MM

Dog
Cat
Run
Fun
Yo
Mamma
Dadda
LOLStalker

Hurry, these won't last long at this price!

And if you act fast, I'll throw in A$$phinctersezwut for free. Comes with a free name change in case it is Generic'd before transaction completes.

In the past year I've built 6-7 new toons to 50 and at least another dozen into the mid 30's. Blasters, Defenders (only a few...not my fave AT), Corrupters (several) and MM's (several). Although its true I have some combo's available to me that provide mezz protection (/Traps for example), I tend to not go that direction. Mezz just isn't game breaking for me. Any more than being attacked is game breaking. I get mezzed, sometimes I die from supplemental attacks. I get attacked without being mezzed, sometimes I still die. But mezzing me as a blaster doesn't mean I'm dead any more than mezzing me as any other AT without mezz resistance. Nor do I notice a higher % of getting mezzed between playing a Blaster vs those other AT's. Now or in the past.

You would know better than I but I don't think the game discriminates vs. Blasters by applying a higher Mag mezz to the Blaster AT versus others, does it?

I get mezzed with my other toons (Defenders, Corrupters, some MM's, etc.) and its never really a problem with those any more than it is with my Blaster. Sure its annoying but c'mon...every AT has a weakness of some kind. Paragon Inspirations LTD needs our support, there's an overstock situation on breakfrees!

In the days I used to keep track of such things as leveling time to 50, my Blasters were always the fastest to level from 1-50 of any AT I had. Even as recently as this past spring I went from 1-50 with a DP/MM (all the cool kids had one...I wanted one too!) in less than 25 hours of total playtime. No PL'ing on that toon, although I do with some. I also took an Archery/Energy from 32-50 (PL'd to 32 just to see if I liked her) in less than 8 hours of team play, mainly running TF's and Radio/Tips with a few AV arcs thrown in towards the Portal Corps late 40's teams. Both of these were slotted entirely via SO's...no IO's at all.

Now having said that, I recognize if others seem to have difficulties playing the Blaster AT. That's apparent from the datamining. But I suspect its a player issue, not an AT performance issue, with melee-centric playstyles not really leveraging the strength of the Blaster AT.

A different issue is the versatility of the AT in the game. There is none. If I want versatility and blasty-blasty ranged damage I go Corrupter. Blasters are just damage and that's it. No other value from the AT to teams at all and everyone else contributes damage.

So just curious....what names/themes are you going with? I parked a couple in anticipation of Beast Mastery release, although I was disappointed to learn its not happening tomorrow. Oh well, the names will keep until it does release, hopefully soon.

Beast/Dark seemed like a good combo. I'd loved to have tried Beasts/TA for a Shaman sort of theme but after my last Demon/TA debacle, I won't touch that again until it does more than just litter the ground with worthless sticks (well, pre-OSA/EMP at any rate). Beast/Dark seemed like a good Congo theme to me so I've come up with a few names that fit that. If it weren't for the Lions, I'd have come up with a supernatural theme. As it was, I grabbed a Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood name as a potential runner up. Might release it however.

Any other ideas for powers/themes/names?

Bots/Time/Mace. I've thus far solo'd every AV I've encountered. Had to drop Vanessa down to +3 but otherwise no sweat.

I've made over fifty lvl 50's after seven years of play. Some have been so nerfed that they were long since deleted. These days, if the toon can't solo +4/x8 by level 45, I typically strip them of all IOs and delete them. For this reason, I don't have many Tanks or Defenders in the mix....I can build them to solo +4/x8, but they are slow performers and not worth my time.

The best of the best are Controllers, Brutes, Scrappers, MasterMinds, Dominators and of course "easy mode" Scrappers. All others...second class heroes.