Dr Harmony

I've had a longstanding problem with getting a Cold Domination character off the ground, and think this combo may solve it.

It looks on paper like a highly offensive team Defender - buff your allies, let them go in first, then melt everything with the double rain of Sleet and Rain of Fire.

Its fairly low on personal damage mitigation - Cold's best buffs are allies only and Fire has no mez powers - so the best solo tactic would appear to be to take on lots of lower level enemies and use the rains, Snow Storm and other AoEs to melt large spawns.

Has anyone else tried this combo?

Would it work better as a Corrupter? Rain of Fire seems to give lower damage for Defenders but Blaster levels values as a Corrupter according to Red Tomax. Is that right? I'm loathe to go Corrupter purely for the 9 levels difference in waiting for Sleet, but a large enough damage difference could swing it.

The cage powers work on Singularities summoned by Longbow Wardens (or Marcone Consiglieres).

Caging the singulairty doesnt make the caster summon a new one.
When the caster is defeated, the caged Singularity disappears, so this is one of the rare situations where you can use these powers without any penalty.

You fight Longbow on two of the 50 hero tip missions, so this is far from an edge case for the typical level 50 hero, who may engage in hero tip farming themesleves or assist others in doing so.

I agree with the above posters - its ridiculous that these highly situational powers are nerfed in the few cases where they could be useful.

I'd do a few things differently.

1) Swap the slotting for Stealth and Manouvers. You may as well give your team and you the extra defence instead of yourself.

2) Slot Cutting Beam for damage, Maybe Positron's Blast and the Achilles proc? Its your main AoE

3) Slot Fortitude. The more teammates you can get this on, and the better defence it gives them, the better. Make Recovery Aura just 3 plain recharge IOs - it gives everyone more than enough end when its up, and doesnt need slotting for that. Also take the HamiO out of Stealth (swapped from Manouvers at 1) ).
Give Fortitude these four extra slots and put Red Fortune in there to maximise recharge and defence, and get back the 5% global recharge you lost from Efficacy Adaptor.

These three are all big priorities. This last few are optional.

4) Maybe consider swapping the Ragnorak set to Cutting Beam instead of Piercing Beam, and replace the Damage and Acc/Reharge with the Dam/End and Chance for Knockdown. This gives you good damage and stats in the power, plus you're knoicking enemies over with your bread and butter area attack, which is available to you from level 8 if you exemplar.

5) I'd maybe switch Absorb Pain out for Overcharge and 5 Posi's but tastes vary. A mininuke with stuns is very nice for day to day use, but so can the massive heal if you run harder content.

6) Oh, that extra slot in Combat Jumping is probably wasted. Maybe. I dunno.

Otherwise, looking good!

I'm an Earth/Energy Dominator, and I picked Musculature for the following reasons:

- I have recharge coming out of my ears, so Spiritual wouldnt make a huge difference. It also has no effect on Domination, beyond affecting Hasten.
- My endurance is pretty much under control with Domination firing off every 90 seconds. So Cardiac is out. And Muscultaure Radial proivdes an extra slot of End Mod in Stamina anyway.
- I have no native +Damage bonuses, so the proprotional effect of the +30% or so damage from higher tier Musculature is bigger than it would be for say a Brute, who wallows in damage bonuses all the time.
- Some of my powers can be underslotted for damage with Musculature picking up the slack. Eg Expedient Reinforcement in my pet is very nice for bonuses, but only provides +80% or so damage.

I'd also maybe consider the newer ones like Agility or Intuition. It all depends on what bonuses you already have through inventions.

I'm an F.

I decided when I came back to the game last year that you can't take it with you, and that I should spend influence as I make it.

All new characters get Miracle +Rec's, and all the LoTG's and bonuses they can eat in the late 20s and 30s. I had two idea recently that required a low level stealth IO (a shrinker/grower with a Stealth Io for shrinking, and a telepath with a "psychic projection" costume slot) All this keeps me from amassing huge amounts of inf.

Last Thursday night Oceanic time, the Virtue nightshift community got together and raided the Rikti Mothership.
Kudos to the organisers of this event - its a quiet time and it was great to see the response as people pitched in. I had an absolute blast taking part.

Unfortunately, maintenance hit with the 30 minute warning once we'd started on the pylons, and we went down fighting - I had the pleasure of tanking Ukon Grai while we were in the central bowl with Tantalya, my Electric Armor tanker.

Even more unfortunately, it seems like the server doesn't save game data immediately before stopping. So I lost out on around 150 Vanguard merits and the Unabashed and Master at Arms badges.

Fortunately, the GM team are an awesome bunch of people, and have restored the lost badges and Vangaurd merits to me after I filed a bug report.

So if any of my league-mates also missed out, send in a bug report and you should get any missing credits restored to you.

Sonic Resonance springs to mind as a set that enhances just about any team.

And it's rare, because its a very support-y set, thats a pain to solo with and does little for the user themselves on a team other than drain their endurance bar.

But it adds a good defensive and offensive boost to any team, so I'm always happy to see one when I'm recruiting.

I like this idea.

It would be a big help to more single-target oriented characters, such as Stalkers, Martial Artists, some Dominators and Controllers and so on.

One of my big gripes with turning 50 is that there's very in-game reason to run at anything other than +0 anymore. In my high 40's, while still levelling, Ill run at+2 at least. Suddenly, on becoming more powerful I stop, and drop down to farming at +0/x6 even on characters which are not so much suited for that.

Rewards drop as readily from a +0 as from a +3, and the inf you get from purples etc dwarfs the extra inf you'd get for defeating higher level enemies.

And a definite yes to the inspiration burst when "levelling up" post 50. I always feel a twinge on my last burst of "stupid mode" with a character.

That would be pretty cool. As long as they weren't synchronised, but had some randomisation in when they start the animation.

Hmm..

Fiery Armor/Energy Assault (the Dominator set) could be nice. Not from any min/max point of view, it just feels a bit cosmic and powerful.

And yeah, I'd take Fury as an inherent. Or maybe Containment for stunned targets?

Nothing much to add other than I hate the word "toon" too.

Kinetic Melee makes a pretty good stand-in for a melee-based air control set.

My namesake needs it, but shes a Dominator. If I squeezed out another 20% or so global recharge I could drop it and still have perms-dom, but I've built for defence too.

I dont miss it on Tantalya, my Electric/Martial Arts Tanker. Build Up, Spring Attack and Energise would be up more often with it, and those Mu Mastery epics would fire more quickly, but that isn't enough to make me feel like I need it.

Doubt I'll take it on my Superstrength/Willpower Brute. No Build Up, unenhanceable Strength of Will, it would just mean a slightly quicker Footstomp and KO Blow, which is nice but not necessary for what I do.

My Beam/Pain Corrupter doesn't have it yet at 38, and I know thats a very suboptimal choice. I'll probably grab it in the 40s.

As a general rule, it seems like melee characters do better without it.

Scrapper definitely.

Your friend won't be providing any psi mitigation, but will be providing healing. You'll be bringing the bulk of the damage.

This probably works very well with Shield Defence. You dont have a self heal, but your friend can heal you. You have some basic resistance which gets boosted to the godly realm by thermal shields. You have an aggro aura that allows you to tank.

The only problem I can see is your friend feeling overshadowed once you get Shield Charge. Although run in, soak aggro and saturate Against All Odds, Melt Armor, Shield Charge will be pretty cool.

Primaries - take your pick.

I like the idea of longer duration controls.

I find Tanker damage to be OK as it is now that most sets have a heavy hitter. Between that, bruising and inherent Stamina you can solo out of the gate without gasping for air after the first spawn.

My solo "role" on my Electric/MA tanker has been to fight large hordes at lower difficulty, say +0/x4 (instead of +2/x1 on my Stalker) and let Lightning Field and my survivability do much of the work. Combat is slow and epic rather than fast and decisive.

On teams its been aggro magnet, herder and pace-setter. I made a tank again to be able to set a good fast pace on teams I lead

I've started a Time Defender the other day, and it struck me that a duo would be quite powerful.

+130% Recharge to each of you due to Chronoshifts (50% each) and Temporal Selection (another 30%).

That beats an empathy duo.

You get Fortitude level damage and accuracy boosts from Temporal selction and Farsight, easily capped defence with double Farsight and manouvers on top of the deuffs of Time's Juncture.

Is a Time/Sonic duo the new Empathy/Sonic duo?

Has anyone tried, um.. two-timing?

Oh yeah! I'd pay for a Kirby Dots aura in a heartbeat.

I agree that it needs some love. My suggestions:

1) Let Sonic Siphon do something more. A non-stacking, single target and no other effects power does not make this set the king of -Res that it should be.

2) Provide some Psi resistance, maybe in both Dispersion and Clarity? Having the hole in your buff set overlap with the hole in half the armor sets just sucks.

3) Turn Sonic Repulsion into a self-based repel field like Kinetics and Force Field get. This power feels like an experiment that just didn't work. Different is not always better. A self-repel field would provide some of the much needed self preservation this set lacks.

Regarding Detention Field, the developers need to stop adding in arbitrary immunity to caging when it would actually help. The power is useless in vanilla PvE, let it shine by caging the Healing Nictus in the ITF, properly caging Devouring Earth emanators and so on when someone does actually take it.

When Psychic damage gets resisted by NPCs it gets resisted hard. No other damage type lets you play through a mission where you're doing half damage to absolutely everything.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. A single powerset with fist, blade, bow and shuriken attacks? Or multiple powersets? And would a single attack be customised to fist,mace or blade, or fixed as one?

If they're customisable, you have animation problems, in that the correct animation and weapon customisation would have to be linked.
If you're proposing a set where some attacks are swords and some are basic melee, look at how often Fire and Ice melee get mentioned in threads about alternate animations.

I think your first link was to Iron Fist?
Just use Energy Melee. Color it whatever you like and say it has some psychic component in your bio. Who cares what the damage type is? - you punch people with glowing fists and they fall over at slightly different rates. Unless you're watching the damage log instead of the game screen you wouldnt know.

Similalry, a Psylocke-esque character could be played using Dual Blades as long as we had a weapon customisation, without the need for a new "Psychic Blades" set being invented.

Funny you say that. My first level 50 way back was a Elec/Elec Blaster, and I used to think that I played her like a Dominator. This was back before I even had City of Villains.

My main is now a Dominator, and its absolutely true.
Hold first. Then damage, closing to melee if you're safe to do so for even more damage. Just like I did back on my Blaster.

Juggernaut was orignally a Hindu idea. From Wikipedia:

The word is derived from the Sanskrit Jagannātha (Devanagari जगन्नाथ) "world-lord", one of the names of Krishna found in the Sanskrit epics.[1]
The English loanword juggernaut in the sense of "a huge wagon bearing an image of a Hindu god" is from the 17th century, inspired by the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Orissa, which has the Ratha Yatra ("chariot procession"), an annual procession of chariots carrying the murtis (statues) of Jagannâth (Krishna), Subhadra and Balabhadra (Krishna's elder brother).


I guess a similar mythological word for a immovable defence could be "Aegis"

The other word that popped into my head, meaning literally
"indivisible" ie cannot be divided further is "atomic", but that has all the wrong connotations now.

The unmoving fixed point in a lever system is the "Fulcrum"

Looks like CoX has already appropriated most of these words

It depends on your secondary.

If you have any toggles that are keeping your teammates alive or un-stunned (eg Sonic Resonance, Radiation) then its probably a bad idea.

If you can boost your own damage and don't have any toggles (Kinetics) it can work OK for those 12 levels and a few trials until you have Judgement.

I've always seen the unresistable -To Hit in Flash Arrow as a pointless novelty.
Against an AV, you can debuff its To Hit by 10% almost if you slot for it. Radiation Infection will have its debuff reduced from 50% if slotted to around 7.5%.

So you lose out by 40% for 99% of the game, and gain by a piddly 2.5% for the other 1%. Not a good deal.


I agree that adding a resistable To Hit debuff to Flash Arrow would help the set a lot. Even a decent unresistabel one wouldn't hurt - its not like Defence buffs get reduced to 15% of their value when you're fighting AVs.

It's a cool idea, but far too easy to game.

A Force Field or Empathy Defender could help you out a lot with minimal effort - get them to level 12 in an evening and then use them as cheap solo support on your main.