Cybercel

As Filth mentioned, but I feel needs really to be clear... you're only going to do well with a team. Now, that said, I've seen Filth hop off by himself and beat up a Controller, and you might catch a lone Defender without any Break Frees, but you really need backup to do much more. Most ATs do better in a team, though, thankfully - as long as you head into the zones at a time when there are a few people around, it's generally not difficult to shout around and find people who are willing to team up.

Without Domination, you should be able to easily hold most Defenders, Controllers, and Blasters in Siren's Call. The exception to this is Force Field users - the big bubble around them protects them, and any allies under it, from most status effects. Go after those people who you should be able to hold, and of those, target people you find to be the greatest threats first. A lot of people will carry Break Frees and get away from your holds, and some of them will repeatedly leave the zone and buy more, which can make your job a bit tiresome, but even holding someone for a second knocks their toggles off, and gives your teammates a better chance.

With Domination, as Filth also mentioned, you can (eventually) hold just about anything, providing they don't pop Break Frees and run for it when they realise what you're up to. I was with him when he held a Stone tank using Granite Armour - he actually did it twice. The first time was completely by himself. The second time, realising it was possible, my Corruptor threw her holds on as well (she's Ice/Dark), and helped stack them, which got the Tank held even more quickly. I've also helped Filth stack holds on other characters when he didn't have Domination up, so keep an eye out for teammates who also have holds (other Dominators, Ice/ Corruptors, and /Dark Corruptors and MMs might), and see if you can cooperate to stack holds on people with higher mez resists. Scrappers and Tanks are a lot easier for your teammates to kill once they are held (and a lot less dangerous), so you're really helping out if you can manage it.

Honestly, I wish we saw more Dominators in the PvP zones. There are so many Controllers on the Hero side, and the Villain side is really losing out by not having enough people with control powers.

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I think MM's are already good in pvp, if they make us even better then every other AT's will start complaining ( though they shouldn't want to inccur the wrath of Lord Recluse )

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As someone who doesn't play a single MM and doesn't much like teaming with them, I think they seriously need some help in PvP zones, and would have been a bit upset if they'd not received any, honestly.

Right now, they're just easy targets (ignore the pets, kill the MM), or enemies I ignore outright (like if they're in PFF, or have invis... although PFF can sometimes be detoggled with a high-acc detoggling attack, like Force Bolt). The pets are pretty easy to get away from, and don't really do enough burst damage to be scary. I'm reaqlly glad they're being looked at, because it'd be great to see more MMs back in PvP... I've seen less and less of them lately.

You're only level 17. Until you can get to 22 and buy SOs, you're not really going to see the greatest benefit from the -acc in Radiation Infection. It IS a fantastic debuff once you get there, though. Both of those debuff toggles are nice against AVs in the late game, too. A lot of sets don't really feel that great until you get SOs in, to be honest. Personally, I'd give it at least until then, because sets can really change in feel once you get to that point. Also, toggle-based debuffs like those in rad, as you may well have noticed, tend to get knocked off by teammates who don't realise that killing the anchor is a bad thing. Try explaining, if that's part of the problem you're having... and if nothing else, you can take some comfort in knowing that later in the game, more people will understand how they work.

If you still find you're not having fun, then roll another Defender, and try again. There's no way to know if you're going to enjoy a character until you play it, so it's not really any loss. You can always leave the rad/rad, and try going back to it at a later time - some characters I've had I've ended up leaving for a while, and found that going back to them fresh really helped.

And yes, Storm is fun, and you can push mobs around to your heart's desire. It's also quite easy to annoy people with until you get the hang of not sending the mobs flying everywhere with various powers, but if you've already got the idea of shoving things into a corner, that's a good start.

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Shades of purple.

For anyone who wants to know what purple prose is .

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I know someone who writes horrendously awful fiction (often fantasy or sci-fi-ish stuff, sometimes with hints of romance) in that sort of style. He thinks he's a fantastic writer, too. He also RPs, I believe in much the same style. I appreciate the fact that he does have a much better-than-usual volcabulary, especially given he's been writing like that since he was in his early teens, but he overdoes it.

As a writing teacher of mine once told us to do, cut out the [self-censored] adverbs! They're very often superfluous, and make writing (and yes, RP) sound cliche. That teacher actually had us take an assignment we'd done, and go through and remove every adverb we'd added, then re-read it, and see how most of them were completely pointless, and just sounded like we were all trying to be better writers than we really were. Being wordy doesn't bother me in the least, if the words are needed... but being very wordy purely for style's sake works for so few people. Especially because so many people, in doing it, actually end up misusing words and writing really poor sentences.

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MMs tend to work by simply overwhelming numbers, 3 MMs are going to create a lag-aggro swarm of 18 pets (I think) at this level. Personally I don't like being on a team with more than one MM and ideally none, but that's just me (I'm a grouch) - some people must enjoy getting stuck in a cave/corridor with 18 robots/zombies/muppets (I think they're the new pet) in the way.

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Have to ask, since I've not done the respec with an MM for a while... does the final room still make the pet AI go screwy? First time I did it we had two MMs, and they ended up having to put their pets on passive, or they went nuts. Even then, they had to constantly tell their pets to come back to them, or they went running suicidally through the vines, making them next to useless. It made it really difficult to methodically and quickly take the vines down (although I and the other Corruptor on the team managed it, in the end). To be honest, I've sort of avoided having MMs I don't know in respec teams, as a result. Is it still doing anything like that?

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You need both for pvp in my opinion, but maybe not so needed in pve.

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I actually find the reverse is true (but I do truly SUCK at PvP) - BFR as an opening hold to stack is great vs bosses in PvE, but 3 seconds is a looong time in PvP... plus I tend to find in PvP that if one hold won't do the job, 2 probably won't either... the slow effect of ice + siphon speed tends to give people more problems (YMMV).

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Exactly what I've found. Generally, if I CAN hold as a Corruptor, I only need one to do it, and I have no chance of stacking holds over anyone's mez protection. I barely use my Dark hold in PvP as a result. The only exception to that is people who have Acrobatics as their only mez protection, but for a Kin with Hasten and Siphon Speed, I'd imagine they could probably cycle a slotted Freeze Ray back so quickly, it'd not be much different than waiting for that three-second animation to play.... except that in the mean time, you can be getting some damage done.

Even as the slower Ice/Dark, back before I had my Dark hold, I pretty much never used BFR in PvP. I had better defensive measures to be taking in those three seconds. It might well be quite different for a Blaster, but as a Corruptor, I find there are more worthwhile things you could be doing if the first hold misses or doesn't work.

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Taking Stealth later than L24 means the OP wouldn’t have it in Siren’s Call (and Warburg is pretty empty when I’ve been there - SC seems busiest for PvP).

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The cutoff for Siren's is level 30, not 24 or 25. Bloody Bay's cutoff is 25.

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Oh well if their both the same I'll probably just go for the simple one :/ hmm I dunno now. I have hasten+sithen speed which gives me soem really stupid recharges on both the holds :P. So spamming them is fine with just the one hold.

decisions decisions.

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If I'm remembering correctly, Freeze Ray is one-second activation, Bitter Freeze Ray is three seconds, and I seem to remember the recharge and end cost being higher for the latter, since it also does some damage (but not much). If you're taking one, go Freeze Ray, and slot it up with recharges to spam it. I dropped BFR, but mainly because I'm /Dark and have another, quicker-firing hold anyway, but I know another Ice/Kin who's said to me he'll probably be dropping it too, as he barely uses it. That animation that goes with it is just a pain, and really feels out of place in the rest of the ice set, with it all being so quick-firing.

While I know you say you don't like Ice, if you're just saying that because of the holds, I think you should look again. Ice is very nice single-target damage, and it fires off quickly. No DoT, just a chunk of damage. The downside is heavy endurance cost and slow-to-reload attacks. Coupled with Rad or Dark, you can up your damage with -resist powers (Enervating Field and Tar Patch, respectively), but both builds will most likely have endurance issues. I have an Ice/Dark, so it's certainly playable, but keep some CaBs around with either build, and make friends with some Kineticists (SB will also have the effect of speeding your attacks up very niely). If you really don't want to play anything that vaguely reminds you of a Dom, go for Rad over Dark, as Dark has more control options. Both are great fun and very useful, anyway.

Ice/Kin could work too, but you risk being a buff-bot for a good while. However, once you get Transference, you'll sort out any endurance problems Ice is causing you, most likely. Also, Fulcrum Shift is an excellent power to help you deal more damage, once you get there. Late-blooming in some ways, but a lot of fun anyway, and probably with less endurance problems since it lacks the toggles of Rad and Dark.

And despite what you said about the holds, they're perfect for stacking on a boss, which fits in very nicely with your idea of neutralising the bosses and lts while your teammates take out the minions. If you really don't want them, though, it's perfectly possible to ignore them outright, and just take the three single-target attacks, Aim, the cone if you like cones (it's quite nice, especially with a -res power down), and then if you like them, the two rain powers of Ice Storm and Blizzard. Blizzard is ridiculously good fun and very powerful. If you go for Ice/Kin, after I7 hits, you'll be able to use Fulcrum Shift and then drop Blizzard, and it will be buffed by Fulcrum Shift.

If you just don't like Ice altogether then ignore this, but I just wanted to make sure you knew it had benefits other than a couple of holds.

One thing I've considered for my Thermal is respeccing into the Leaping pool. I've found that most of the times that I get killed or let someone else on the team die, it's because I've been knocked down or back. Acrobatics (the final-tier Leaping power) would stop that. (Sure, turning Hover on lessens the effect of Knockback, but even with Hover slotted, it's not a fast way to move around.) It also adds a small amount of hold resist. Combat Jumping (one of the initial powers in the set) gives a little bit of def, and also some immobilise resist - there have been a good few times Longbow have immobed me somewhere that I was out of range for healing team members, or stuck in an ignite patch from a flamethrower, so I can see it being useful.

The downside is the loss of versatility that Hover and Fly give, sadly. If you could find room in your build, Hover three-slotted for flight speed could sort that out; I've found that for PvE, slotted Hover is great, especially for characters who are doing a lot of healing. In PvP, I find it to be a little too slow for the same use, though... nothing more frustrating than seeing a teammate at low health, and not being able to get there in time to save them.

I really, really doubt you'll need the end reductions in the heals, especially with Stamina. Three recharge/three heal will do you a lot better. The heals are noticeably weaker than Empath heals, as you'd expect, and you want them up as much as possible in rough situations. My Rad/Thermal uses her heals AND attacks all the time, and I very rarely have endurance problems on her, with three recharges in the heals.

I don't think I'll be slotting any heals in Power of the Phoenix. Sure, it doesn't take the person to full health, but throwing a quick heal on them after using it will. Is it really worth two slots on a situational power when you can just use one of your other powers to fix the issue?

I don't have the final two powers from Thermal yet, but I generally find three accuracies to be overkill. Especially when removing one or two would let you put recharges in Melt Armour. Either way though, they look well-worth six slotting, and you can always try things out once you have one and see what works best.

Trying to get this thread back on track... my Empath doesn't have any of those badges. I got the third one not long before 50, and since then, I've mainly been playing other toons. Ah well, some day, perhaps.

I did see someone wandering around with the Empath badge on Union, though! That was the first time I've seen it.

If you have a spare space and someone to SK me too, I'd love to bring my level 36 Controller (Cybercel) along - my level 50 already has them, so it'd be a bit pointless bringing her. I understand if you want to try and mainly get people at the correct level range, though.

Pretty sure we just had seven people. (I was Dystopia, btw.)

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When you team with blasters or other defenders, switch more to blasting mode and don't worry about healing until mobs stray into the group enough for you to be able to fire off a heal.

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Or, once you're confident of your powers, tell everyone on your team to stay close together at melee range, and keep everyone buffed and healed at once. It works better in the later levels when you have SOs (so you're more certain you'll actually hit those heals), and when people tend to be a little more aware of how Kineticists work, and are slightly better at teamplay.

One of the people I've been teaming with a lot recently is a Kineticist who likes to form her own teams, and then gets people on her teams to stick close together like that. Her teams tend to storm through missions.

It's 30-34, sadly, or we'd have loved to have you along. The members of Freaks Unleashed have an unhealthy love of Kinetics.

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I often team with three Brutes and playing as a defender is definately my best role whilst doing this. I just dont get time to shoot anything as they go down faster than my activation time.

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Mm, there are certainly times when you can switch roles, and I think that's part of the versatility of the Corruptor - you can flip into concentrating on your secondary due to a specific situation or team makeup quite well. At lower levels especially I found myself sometimes jumping into a defensive role on my Ice/Dark, because I just didn't have the endurance to do everything - when things got bad, I'd sometimes drop back and use my heal and debuffs to keep everyone alive and safe if it was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to just kill off the mobs that were causing trouble.

On the whole though, like you said, I'm much more offensive than that. As gets said fairly often, a dead enemy is one who can't hurt you, so it only makes sense to make full use of that damage output. It doesn't carry over to a normal or defensive Defender build though, no. I've been repeatedly finding that out when I return to play my Defenders. My Empath doesn't really have any attacks, and trying to play her after so long as an Ice/Dark is quite a switch. Logging onto my Stormy for the first time in months was a bit of a shock, too!

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I think you would be surprised at how little impact the decrease in effeciveness of your secondary has compared to the increase in effectiveness in the primary and the change in inherent. I suspect a Rad/Rad corruptor with an identical build to your defender would easily out damage you with little additional risk.

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Quoting this for truth, pretty much.

Defenders, from what I've heard, are at 65% damage of Blasters. Corruptors have been quoted at 75%. That 10%, having played both, makes a massive difference. Meanwhile, the lowered secondaries don't feel like they make a huge difference - i.e., if I put Darkest Night, as a Corruptor, on an AV, it's very noticeable and I suddenly can surive very easily. Unlike a Defender, though, I have the damage output to actually kill it.

Same in PvP, where my Corruptor is a LOT of fun to play in one-on-ones, because I have the debuffs (and they're strong enough to make life difficult for all but the most tweaked PvP builds), but I also have enough damage output to actually finish people off before they escape. Having seen a lot of Defenders in PvP, the majority of them are stuck playing support, while a few specifically built ones actually have a good go of it, but still often need other people with them to get kills. I've fought enough Rad/Rad Defenders in Siren's Call to know they're annoying, but don't really worry me, because they can't kill me before I can kill them.

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Recycled content is the name of the game with CoV, so i dont think its me who is being fooled that Corrupters are all too different to Defenders... Just possibly in the psycological approach to templates. Scourge is a really nice thing, but killing things faster is not equal to surviving killing more things, but slower.

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I thought that Corruptors were pretty much reverse Defenders when I saw what the powersets were. I was not very impressed to tell the truth, when I saw how much they'd recycled. I assumed they were going to be very, very similar to Defenders. Just Defenders with slightly weaker buffs and slightly stronger attacks. And I continued to feel that way when I played my Rad/Thermal... and then I made an Ice/Dark. And then I got the Ice/Dark up to SOs, and realised that what I was playing was NOT a Defender, was not very much LIKE a Defender, and that I'd really been fooled thinking they were all that similar, despite the shared sets.

It would seem there's been an across-the-board reaction like this, because when CoV first came out, I saw a lot of broadcasts of people asking for healers, people looking for Corruptors to come and act as Defenders on pick-up teams. My /Thermal got a lot more invites than any of my other characters. Then things started to change, and I've been seeing a lot less of those kind of broadcasts, and a lot more teams who are happy having an MM and a Corruptor who act as damage dealers first, but happen to also have a nice heal and who can buff or debuff. I started getting invited when teams needed some extra damage output on an AV or Hero - and as I found yesterday, my Ice/Dark actually can solo Minx. She may be one of the easier ones, but I know none of my Defenders would have had a chance.

Regardless of powerset similarities, Corruptors just don't really play like Defenders on the whole. I'm sure if you wanted to you could probably shoehorn one into that role - especially a /Thermal since they do have a lot of really nice team-friendly powers to take from their secondary - but it's not where Corruptors excel overall. And I feel I have to point out...

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if your finding Kin better as a corrupter, it can possible be due to Scourge or the fact youve taken more Offence and slotted more heavily than you would normally. Because aside from that, the mechanics for the two classes are not that differnt. (a small concession in that Scourge is Very Good...) Oh, and you chose fire, which isnt available to a defender. Its added DoT makes more than a small difference with Scourge factored in. Something im wondering if they will be fixing soon. Or is it WAI? (ive taken Fire/Dark)

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More base damage. A fantastic inherent power that gives us criticals that can destroy an AV (trust me, Scourge only gets better as you level and fight harder enemies). More damaging powersets that aren't available to Defenders (Fire and Ice). Naming three things like that and saying, at the same time, that the mechanics are not all that different is really, really silly IMO. They may be realtively small changes (although Scourge isn't, especially when you get into AVs, as I mentioned), but the changes add up to more than the sum of the parts. Do Controller secondaries play exactly the same as Defender primaries, despite them being the same sets? From what I've seen, not if you're playing the two ATs well. I think the Corruptor/Defender issue is very much the same. Of course, the Corruptor is closer to the Offender build than to your average Defender, and the two may well be played in a similar way, but the basic Corruptor still is more of a damage-oriented build because no matter how offensive you try to make a Defender, it has lower base damage, and Vigilance instead of Scourge.

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Dont reroll, ill get slammed for 'dissing' kinetics, but i dont beleive it fits the 'offender' or 'offensive corrupter' role too well. Its a great team buffer tho... so find some pals and excite them with speed boost and fulcrum shift.

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I don't think there's much point in specifying "offensive Corrutors," as Corruptors are, by nature, quite offensive. They have a damage dealing primary, unlike Defenders, which are an entirely different beast, regardless of shared sets. Defensive Corruptors are really the minority, unlike with Defenders, so I really wouldn't mention the two in the same sentence.

I do think Kinetics is a better team set, because face it, it has some fantastic powers that you either can only use on others (Speed Boost) or work on the whole team (Fulcrum Shift). I think that's true of all Corruptors, that said... perhaps just slightly more for Kinetics over Dark or Rad, for instance. However, a Kinetics Corruptor can solo well, and can be a massively offensive force within a team. Having teamed with LP's Ice/Kin and Syn's Fire/Kin, I've seen plenty of that first-hand. Frankly, I'd really hate to see someone try to play a Kin Corruptor as a Defender, placing keeping everyone perma-buffed over actually using their primary.

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Just to be sure, this is planned for the 3rd of April right? Just making sure you're not going American on us

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I'd like that clarified, too. If it's then, depending on my schedule, I might well be able to bring my Grav Controller along.

As far as things you've missed... as was mentioned in a post above, there's Enhancement Diversification. What ED (as it gets referred to) means is that there's now a system of diminishing returns on enhancements, if you slot multiple of the same kind in a power. When you're using +3 SOs, you'll start to notice the dropoff slightly on the third SO, and the fourth SO will add quite a lot less.

What this means is that people have switched from the old 1 Acc/5 Dam slotting on attacks, to 1/2 Acc (2 mainly for PvP, where everyone's base def is higher), 3 Dam, and then filling in the remaining slot or two with Recharge Reductions and/or Endurance Reductions. It also means Hasten can no longer be perma. Three recharge reductions is generally the way most people go. Same with Stamina. However, endurance costs were reduced across the board by 13% to make up for that. As far as Tanker powers, this basically means slotting three res or def is considered the way to go, and then perhaps some endurance reductions, and then... well... you have extra slots for elsewhere. If you really have nowhere to put them, you can keep them where they were, but they only give you 5% bonus or something like that. Here's a post going into the whole thing in-depth.

Personally, I have to say while it all sounds fairly horrible at first, going from 6-slotting to 3-slotting of a lot of powers... I actually like it, for the most part, aside from the loss of 6-slotted Hover.

On a simpler and happier-sounding note, you also missed us finally getting Global Chat.

I think those and CoV are the major things... there havebeen some little minor things - we actaully had a Christmas event, and we're in the middle of a Valentine's Day event right now, which takes place in the newly renovated Paragon Dance Party (now actually cool, not just a crappy warehouse map). End result of all of it is that some people keep saying the game's so much worse than it used to be and complain about constant nerfs, and some people keep saying it's better. I'd just get playing again, and judge it for yourself.

The secondary powersets for Corruptors are very useful, and a lot of us enjoy them immensely. I really have to think that if you don't like how Corruptors play due to their secondaries, that - as Syn mentioned - you should probably go play a Blaster in CoH instead. Just as much range, more damage, and various damage and other non-buff/heal powers in the secondary.

And so you know, Transfusion is one of the most powerful AoE heals in the game. However, it's a little more difficult to use since you have to stand near the enemy you hit with it, and if you hit an enemy with it at the same time someone kills it, the heal will fail. You might want to try /Thermal or /Dark if you want to be able to stay at range and heal yourself. Kinetics is a better team set than solo set, IMO - and the secondaries aren't just meant to support us, the Coruptors, in combat. They're made to support whole teams, and as a result, most Corruptors do better teamed up.

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Heh, heh. Well that's encouraging at least. Fun is always my main concern over power.

Thanks for the reasurance, any advice on tricks or tactics would be much appreciated.

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Honestly, I haven't really got her high-levelled enough to say I know many tactics. I'm still mainly in the "throw down Caltrops and scream at stuff" stage.

It's certainly not awful and doomed to fail, even if I can't give you a whole lot of help. I have a Sonic/Dev at 26 - the only Blaster I've really managed to enjoy playing, as it works out. I haven't had a chance to play her much lately, so I wouldn't feel comfortable really offering much advice... my mind's just too wrapped up in Corruptors and Controllers.

I can say however, that it's a lot of fun if you want to play a ranged Blaster with some fun tricks. I've been building mine just to be fun to play, with lots of options on what she can do in any given fight, rather than going for all-out power. I'm currently playing with the idea sending mobs to sleep with Siren's Song and then dropping a Time Bomb in the middle of them. Only problem is that I have no idea how to fit Time Bomb into my build, as there are too many other powers I want to take.