Dr Harmony

You wont be the fastest solo-er with FF/Beam Rifle, but you'll be OK. You could do much worse with Empathy, Sonic resonance or Pain Dom. Traps/Sonic, for example, will solo better, but you won't feel that badly every moment with FF/Beam.

Beam Rifle specialises in single target damage, so that works well for taking small groups of enemies down one by one. Force Field will help you solo by deflecting some attacks and making you immune to holds and stuns via Dispersion Bubble.
Force Bolt provides plenty of mitigation too, you can keep juggling a boss with it as you take him down.

On a levelling team, they're not a bad combo. Plain Guy is right that you wouldn't help a team of IO'd out incarnates much, but thats 100 hours of gameplay away, so feel free to experiemnt with this combination for now. As you level, you'll hear "Yay! Force Fields" plenty of times as you join a team.

You make the rest of your team invincible, and you yourself are the weak link since you dont get your best buffs.
(Slotted Force Fields is roughly 1/2 of atacks bounce off you, 90% bounce off your team)
You're best off not drawing aggro under these circumstances, so stick to single target attacks. Which Beam Rifle excels at. Work on the principle "you tag it you bag it" and take out annoying leiutenants, leaving the rest of the team to handle the masses safe and sound in their bubbles.

I took Musculature on my namesake, a Earth/Energy Dominator, but only because I've stuffed myself with purple sets and luck of the Gamblers and recharge already. It works rather well because I dont have any native damage buffs, so the net increase is better.

When I returned to the game, I looked at reviving my old Force Field Defender and going with Nerve to boost defence, until I looked at the numbers. If I provide 28.5% base defence (45% enhanced) 28.5*.13=to a teammate, (Bubbles + Manouvers) say, then the extra gain with the Tier 4 is of the order of an extra 6% or so. Ceratinly not enough to make a difference in incarnate content.

The + Accuracy from nerve isn't that great, because its still an accuracy bonus rather than +To Hit. You'll still hit regular enemies with 95% certainty and whiff against Rikti Drones, Captain Mako and Paragon Protectors, despite devoting your alpha slot to being able to hit more often.
And two purple sets will grant you +30% global accuracy anyway, which is not unusual for many incarnated characters.

I'd almost say Nerve is useless.

As for set that don't need recharge bonuses, I'd say Force Field and Sonic Resonance defenders.

Traps provides the best Defence to yourself, plus a -To Hit in Seeker Drones. Force Fields comes a close second, and both provide status protection.

Add in:

Tough and Weave
Manouvers
Combat Jumping
Hover

If you're happy to use them as your four power pool choices.

I'd say Charged Armour is the best shield power, providing resistance to Energy as well as smashing and lethal.

And top it all off with Dark Blast if you want surviviability - your two cones will add a considerable -To hit to all enemies, as will your single target blasts.

Radiation Blast's cone does good damage, but has a long animation time and low %age knockback.
The set also packs a PBAoE and a ranged AoE, so you could skip the cone easily enough.

You're then left with a fairly standard blast set with low damage fast-cycling single target blasts (bad) that accept a lot of procs (good), with the status attack built into your attack chain (good) and a fairly lacklustre secondary effect of -Def (bad).

Its not a perfect solution, but you can already do this today:

1) Craft the temporary powers Revolver, Stun Grenades and Hand Grenades
2) Repeatedly get the Holy Shotgun Shells (75 shots, cone Aoe and knockback) power from the second mission of one of the Striga arcs via Ouroborous
3) Get the Confiscated Beanbag (75 shots stun ranegd attack) from the Freakshow single mission after level 25 via Ouroborous.

Thats how my space marine tanker carried a wide variety of munitions.

I quite like the idea of a munitions power pool, what would the actual powers be?

I started off playing Blasters, and would echo what has already been said about enjoying the tactical nature and challenge.

I was drawn to my latest Blaster because I figured I could get enough survivability through other means, but couldn't find the raw damage output anywhere else.

I wanted to make a Kryptonian-style character with Strength, Flight, Invulnerability and Heat Vision. The obvious route is a melee character with Laser eyes in the APP, but I realised a Rad/EM Blaster would work just as well, except I start off with Heat Vision and work my way towards Invulnerability (via Kinetic Combats and the Scorpion Shield). Punching my way through enemies hard enough to send them flying or ring their skulls certainly covers superstrength. All the extra area damage is icing on the cake.

Playing a primarily melee Blaster has been extra fun in terms of forwards planning and challenge.

My namesake, an Earth/Energy dom, went with the Primal Forces APP, and I havent regretted the addition of two relatively quick area attacks that thematically match my other powers.
Conserve Power came in very handy once I got these two attacks, too. These three powers work together very well if you've been building up Recharge bonuses.

They'd work rather well with Crushing Field (and its lack of -KB) to provide extra control, whereas Crushing Field would neutralise the fear-type control in Rain of Fire. Note that Energy Torrent is Knockdown, but Explosive Blast is knockback, and would cause some scatter on an immobilised group.

I'd say bite off what you can chew in the mission, and don't expect to pull your full weight. As a Brute, dont expect to take the alpha, but helping with the clean up after the alpha strike on each group is fine.

A level 50 team running +4/x8 could probably steamroll with half the members, but have invited you and other mid/lowbies for the company, because its the nice thing to do, and to break up the tedium of running solo or in small groups.

If anyone gives you grief for not pulling your weight in this situation, they're being unrealistic, so don't beat yourself up about it. Just enjoy the ride.

I definitely agree.

Having to wait until halfway through a characters career to get what may be a defining costume piece is ridiculous. I've always advocated costume parts being account unlocks, but charging the player a few paragon points makes much more sense now.

Plus, I'm not a fan of characters wearing inappropriate witch's hats or roman armour for bragging rights, it often just looks silly. Badges are way better for that.

Have you ever joined a supergroup, only to find you never meet any of its members due to your time zone?

If so, I'd like you to know that the Hero League International (Virtue, blueside) is recruiting, and I'm spearheading the push to build our membership in the Oceanic times zones.

The League is composed of representatives from different countries working together to keep Paragon City and the world safe - each character is the only member from their respective nation. Members range from atomic powerhouses like myself (Dr Harmony, Singaporean representative) to non-powered characters such as Cuba's Vata Loca or Scotsmans' Blade (from Scotland!) or anything inbetween. We also span the gamut from hardened veterans of the crimefighting scene to naive young mutants coming to grips with their gifts. Like many of our members, I'm not actually the same nationality as my character, so feel free to make a rep from whatever country intrigues you.

A list of our current roster is kept up to date at our guild portal site here:

http://hli.guildportal.com/Guild.asp...opicID=9831965

If you're looking to design a new character for the League, this is a handy reference as to which countries are not represented.

We're a role-playing group. Everyone's definition of this is a bit different - for us, it means talking in character whilst doing missions and sometimes hanging around the base chatting. I often run teams with League members and anyone else who's around during the week, and maybe task forces at the weekend. We're not demanding RP nazis though, so dont let this put you off.

Did I mention the base? Its fully functional in terms of teleporters and other facilities, but also an amazing split-level masterpiece by our designer, Ayumu Diachi, featuring the best medical bays I've ever worked in, labs, living quarters, personalised rooms for members, and "The Beast" - a giant armoured truck in our garage!

We also have a second group, Hero League Infinity, for non-national-icon characters and alts of HLI members. Any existing characters who don't fit the Hero League's admittedly restrictive criteria would be more than welcome there.

If you'd like to arrange an interview, I can be contacted here on the forums by PM, or in-game during Australian evenings most weeknights (that's 2-3 hours before maintenance onwards) as @Carla Simone.
In game, Dr Harmony has emailed the embassies of many unrepresentd countries, so feel free to use that as an in-character excuse to call me.

I look forwards to hearing from you!

Thats a very cool idea. I'd like that a lot.

You can sort of do this already. Make two costumes that are identical but for the attack animations, and bind your power keys, say 1 and 2, to activate the costume change. It wont be random, but your character will switch style every 30 seconds or so of fighting.

Youll also spam your chat log with messages about costume changes not being ready..

It definitely would be nice to build some resistance on a SR scrapper.
But doing so opens the doors for Blasters building for defence and resistance, which I guess was something the developers wished to avoid. I don't know that's the case, because I dont think there ever has been initial word on it.

How do you circumvent defence failure?
Off the top of my head I can think of:

Earth Thorn Casters - take Hover
Generic -def debuffs in bullets etc - build above the soft cap to avoid immediate cascade failure. This is almost impossible without native defence powers.
To Hit buffs (eg Devouring Earth, Nemesis' vengeance) - there is no circumventing that one.

I'd always assumed that the thinking went along the following lines:

Allowing anyone (even a Blaster) to build up high defence AND resistance would be too much. And if both were offered on IOs, people would find a way. (I've managed to build some very nice recharge and defence bonuses on the same character, for example, so its never either-or with IOs)

Of the two, Defence is more easily circumvented. Defence debuffs, To Hit Bonuses are very common in enemy groups, whereas unresistable Resistance debuffs are almost non-existent. (Longbow used to have them, or still do?)

So we were given the ability to build just for defence using IOs.

I'd disagree that Resistance based sets get left out in the cold, since they can build layered defence using IOs to complement their innate heals and resistance. My Fire Armor scrapper and elctric Armor tanker have had a lot of success with that approach.

I ran Super Reflexes on a Scrapper, who I later re-rolled as a Stalker, and it was brilliant once I had invested in it.

45% is the softcap. At that level of defence you get hit once in a while, and generally accumulate enough green pills to cover the damage without any problem.

The set's powers give you around 31% defence. Weave and Combat Jumping can give you another 8% or so, and you can close the gap with IO set bonuses.

Once you get there, the lack of resistance or a self-heal is very much a non-issue. I used to run my Stalker without status protection and get away with it, hardly ever getting stunned or held.
Its slow to level, with your area attack defence taking a long time to materialise.

Defence debuffs are not a problem, but Devouring Earth will completly ruin your day due to the Quartz emanators that give them massive hit bonuses.

I'm currently running Electric Armor on a Tanker, by the way, and definitely feel this is the right way round. Super Reflexes does all it can possibly do on Scrappers and Stalkers (and Brutes) while Electric Armor offers considerably more resistance for Tankers.

I'm currently enjoying my Martial Arts tank with the Kinetic Combat proc in Thunder Kick and Storm Kick (20% Knockdown each), Kick (15% Knockback) and Crane Kick (60% Knockback).
Fighting a single target, I'd say they're upright and fighting less than 50% of the time, and it looks like theyre constantly getting tripped and thrown.
(Spring Attck and Dragons Tail coming up too... )

But I don't think I'd take even a single power that mainly did Knockdown instead of damage.

That would be a bit like Stun in Energy Melee, or how Cobra Strike/KO Blow/Clobber used to be. I do occasionally take Stun from Energy Melee, but thats to stack hard control. Wasting animation time and endurance on soft control alone would be an exercise in frustration.

A whole set of low damage throws? No thank you.

My advice is take your favourite existing melee set and invest in some Kinetic Combat procs. They're cheap, and quite effective at doing what you're describing.

My Fire Armor scrapper had 4 points of knockback protection, from a single IO. In levelling her to 50, I got knocked back once by some Council or Fifth Column (two grenades at once) and several times by Fake Nemesis robots.

This was less than 1% of my journey to 50 and beyond.

I'd say 4 is perfectly adequate. The occasional knockback doesn't hurt you, just makes you feel toguher and more heroic.

I was referring to defence powers only there. My bad for not saying so.
I don't known how Hoarfrost is affected.

Frozen Amrour in Cold Mastery adds resistance to Cold, Fiore and Toxic, so I'd be surprised if it gets its defence boosted by Power Boost, as resistance seems to be the common rule for not getting boosted. But I havent tested that one in person.

The only major shield power that does get a big boost that Ive tested is the Day Job Combat Shield Power (with all the limitations that entails). Thats +14% or so defence vs Smashing. lethal and energy with no reisstance, and it gets the full Power Boost effect.

It only boosts powers that don't give a resistance bonus too.

So Scorpion Shield, for example, doesn't receive the boost because it gives some Toxic Resistance. Ice Shield grants some resistance to fire and cold, so it doesnt get boosted.

It will basically boost the bonuses you get from Manouvers, Combat Jumping, Weave and Hover, and so can add a potential 10% increase at most, probably a bit less?

I play Earth Control with some power customisation as atomic transmutation - turning the air into diamond or chlorine gas and so on. Its a more science-based concept, kind of like Firestorm from the JLA when coupled with Energy Assault.

Is that what you meant by alchemy, or are you referring to some other source material?

Kinetic Melee was easy. I had a character already who had a full-body full-time forcefield and had trained in "remote Tai Chi" to use it in combat.

I was already planning on making a Praetorian version when Kinetic Melee came out and it was perfect for a non-contact martial art.

But I think you're asking about the Defender set, right?

I've played a Controller who was a speedster (Ice/Kinetics - she converted random molecular motion ie heat into forwards motion) but most of the powers left me in utter despair as to how to justify them. Assuming she could transfer Kinetic Energy to other people, Speed Boost, Fulcrum Shift, Siphon power and Siphon Speed all made sense-ish.

Transfusion - no idea how this was supposed to work.

I liked the unsupressed movement boost from Siphon Power, used with Sands of Mu I felt very speedster-ish. But more than anything, I hated the fact that zipping around often meant missing my own buffs from Transfusion and Transference.

Sonic Resonance is a very low maintenance back seat set. I'd say Defender is the lowest maintance way to play this.

You can fulfill your basic team obligations by
1) popping Disruption Field on the melee-ist leading the charge
2) toggling on Dispersion
3) buffing everyone every 4 minutes
4) firing off single target blasts, and Sonic Siphon at hard targets

You can take the lawn chair at the back and make the rest of the team be the heroes, and everyone's happy. Works with any blast set.

I'm contemplating Beam/Pain, with a side order of Leadership toggles.

There will be some redraw with spot heals required, but with Soothing Aura and World of Pain I think I can get by without having too much redraw, compared to say Empathy's busy buff cycle.

Or maybe Thermal.

Has anyone got any particularly good or bad experiences with Thermal or Pain paired with Beam Rifle?

Yes, I think that idea works, Downtown. Really well in fact.
Sort of a lifetime subscription to the IO system - where you'd pay for maybe a year's worth of IO usage upfront to have the invention system unlocked forever on your account.

From the players point of view, it feels good and secure.
From Paragon's point of view, it's cashflow now, and some players may purchase IO time they don't use to blance the free IO time they'd be giving out in a years' time.

I dont agree with the OP's idea.

What if a new player pays $2 to unlock the IO system, and then lets their 30 day licence expire? Do they get to keep the IOs they slotted? Or are we working on some other information like the last time the character's build was modified, if its before Freedom Day Zero or not? Is that information in the character database even?

Wouldn't this just turn $2 into an unlimited use of IOs and thus lose Paragon Studios money?

I think it opens up too many problems, and as others have said the solution already exists