Doctor Vivian

Way-to-go E-lec-tro! Gratz SIX times!

I hope to see you eventually celebrate your 60th Toon on Guardian!

-- Vivian

The best thing about Sets are Set Bonuses. While individually small, these bonuses add up to be truly significant when all your powers are properly and carefully Setted. The difference between a Fully-Setted toon and one stocked simply with all Common IOs can be seen and felt beyond the mere fact of "To Hit" or "Damage" bonuses being capped.

The Fully Setted toon will have a wide array of Recharge bonuses, Regen, Defense, Resistance, Accuracy, Mez Resist, Knockback Resist -- the list goes on and on -- not to mention the secondary attributes given to powers that normally don't have them -- like Knockdowns, Holds, extra Damage of different types and more. The add-up to all of this means your toon will fight harder without running out of END, give out more damage-per-second and be able to take more damage.

So before going down the Frankenslotting Route on all your powers (Frankenslotting being, in my opinion, only useful on certain powers, such as Health, where you would Frankenslot one Numina +Rec/+Regen, one Miracle +Rec, and one Regen Tissue +Reg, etc), be sure to consider your other options.

After all, prices in the post-merge market have plummeted, and so you could employ your 400 million to good effect.

However -- and I cannot stress this strongly enough -- you can very easily make mistakes. Many respecs later you may realize you wasted a lot of INF.

How to avoid this? Use an offline character and enhancement build planner, such as MIDS. Used properly and with a lot of careful thought and tweaking, you can make sure you get the most bonuses across all your sets before actually buying a single one -- not to mention make sure that your build's powers are taken in the order best suited to being Exemplared down for various Task Forces and Flashbacks, so that you'll still have everything you need at Level 15, 20 or 30.

You can download MIDS for free at: http://www.cohplanner.com/

With all that being said, you may also want to wait until the next Issue is released before diving in and making all your purchases, as in it, Fitness becomes an inherent power. But by all means, experiment with MIDS for now. It's a great resource in helping you to understand Sets and Set Bonuses.

Last but not least, remember that you don't get bonuses for IO's of any type that are of a Level that is higher than your Exemplared level. So, if you're in a Level 40 Zone or on a Task Force, Trial, Flashback, etc., all of your Level 50 IOs will not be giving you any Enhancement or Set Bonuses (Purple/Unique Sets are an exception to this, and they will still give their Set Bonuses).

This is why it is often better to get lower level IOs than 50 -- the difference in enhancement bonus of a Level 40 IO vs a Level 50 IO is not that great, and the Level 40 IO will keep on working in a wider range of scenarios.

-- Vivian

That's not very Virtuous of him.

-- Vivian

I'm not sure I agree at all with shenanigans being called when referring to this idea.

I think it makes sense that any enemy, realizing that they are outmatched and in danger of being arrested or worse, would try and flee.

It also makes sense that they would come to such a realization faster if they couldn't land a hit on their attacker versus if they were actually hitting them.

It's better that they try and run than be mindless sheep, isn't it?

-- Vivian

Er... what?

To answer this question directly, Vengeance will only affect the team-mates of the caster, and can only be cast upon a fallen team-mate.

However, there is a way to multiply the power of Vengeance if you're careful and not doing it in a rush, which can make it into a truly potent technique.

Specifically, this refers to stacking Vengeance.

Normally this cannot be done. However, if multiple people on a team have Vengeance, and all have targeted a fallen person who is outside of their target range and have the power queued up, then the fallen person is teleported into their midst, all the Vengeances will go off simultaneously and stack. Two, three or four Stacked Vengeances on top of conventional buffs can make a team unstoppable for a short while.

However, you need to really practice this and be quick on the draw with fast commands / binds / what-have-you (Vengers, to me! Target $target! Queue Vengeance! Teleporting $target!) in order to make it happen fast and successfully on a CoP Trial -- there's usually not much time (if any) to waste on careful maneuvering like this when several spawns of Rularuu are attacking you.

-- Vivian