DrGamma

And her sister (who is trying to flee/has fled the Whispering Hand) has the codename Swift Cut, doesn't she?

Not reliably. Just the facts that it can only be out for 5 every 15 minutes and there's no way to make it recharge faster mean you're uncovered for two thirds of the time. Then stimulant is only up for 5 seconds, and it takes much longer to animate and recharge. It takes so long to animate (over 5 seconds), that it won't even replace the need for an emergency break free, even if it happens to be recharged when you need it. The aura only offers minimal protection to stun and immob (its stun protection is theoretically worse than the hold protection in acrobatics, and acro doesn't protect against hold all that well), even if it was kept on all the time (which it SHOULD be, dammit!)...

That's why I went Clarion Destiny even with the Orb. But for 5 seconds after being healed by the Orb, I have some extra mez protection which might come in handy... someday... <.<

Oh, DUH! That's very good indeed for FF, I need to rethink that choice for my bubbler now... Thanks for the heads up, I was reading that epically wrong.

Are you sure the debuff res part of Ageless ADDS the debuff to your/your team's attacks (that looks more like an Interface thing), or somehow debuffs enemies? (I think Destiny only affects allies, not enemies...)

Or are there any hidden powers that do -res in ff/dark/dark that could be improved?

Because I was under the strong impression that the +85% debuff res in Ageless only improves upon -res powers you already have, instead of adding a new effect somewhere (If my FF/Sonic goes incarnate, the ageless -res does look very appealing).

But I could be wrong, anyone know for sure?

If my impression is right, you might be better served by going for the end side of Ageless... Even if your end is already under control, +recharge usually means you're eating up end much faster...

Done it a few times with my Claws/Regen Scrapper and it was fun. I think I always got lucky with good PUGs, though, so that helped.

I usually fall two or three times on average per run when I get careless, but promptly revive, MoG and keep kicking a**.

She's not IOed for defense at all. I only hit 50 with her recently, but I purposefully decided to go with a non-def build just to learn/evaluate survival with only regen/heals, since most of my other characters are indeed built for defense. She does have CJ (cause it's CJ!) and Weave (was running out of good powers to pick), giving a puny 10% def (outside the few seconds of MoG godhood, of course) but I doubt that counts as building for defense...

The main difference when playing her, though, is that I have to dedicate a lot of my attention to surviving and frequently use every trick I get (Reconstruction, DP, IH, MoG, AoE KB, ST KD...) to stay alive, while with other characters I can focus more on dealing damage instead and just take survival for granted. But she's very fun to play like that, when I'm in the mood.

I also tanked the ITF with my /DA scrapper once and we did pretty good. It was my first ITF too, I think, so I didn't know about Romi's stunning rez and got dettogled and massacred once because of that, but otherwise, I don't really remember dying. Being /DA, though, she does have some defense, but once again I did not build for it, so she's far from the softcap. All her defenses are in the 20%-25% range I think...

You don't necessarily need high defenses if the GM never shoots at you, that's why ye ole Illusion/Rad controller was a staple of AV/GM soloing even before IOs were introduced. Rad has AM that helps you get Phantom Army perma and debuffs that increase it's damage, plus Lingering Radiation to put a huge dent in anything's regen. You only need to be able to survive aggro in the interval while recasting PA (and that can often be done with tactics instead of high defense or the like). Phantasm used to help more with damage (and his Decoy even helped with aggro sometimes) before the AI change that now makes him rush to melee often despite having no melee attacks. You yourself (as opposed to your pets) won't be doing as much damage as other controllers might, though, because I don't think Illusion controllers can get immob anywhere for containment (do GMs have the immob/sleep hole too? I'm not even sure), even if they go for patron powers, but an Ill/Rad would still be a solid choice, and I have -always- seen them be very welcome in teams (funny how KB haters don't complain about illusion's pets...)

As for other controllers/dominators, I don't think you could go the route of letting your pet take all the beating, because not being indestructible they might not take it too well, and the tough ones who might do it (Say, Stoney with Thermal shields, heals, buffs and even debuffs) might not keep the GM aggro as tightly on them as PA does - but I never tried it, so this is pure speculation. And actually looking up how crazy good Thermal is to post this, I'm feeling like trying that out now! Cold is a great alternative to Rad in the debuffing (and even pet/ally buffing) department, even if it won't help with your PA recharge. I've seen people do crazy things with Cold domination (so I think it's funny when I see teams waiting for rads specifically... Even though my main character IS a Rad!) Not saying the other buff/debuff sets are not worth it, but I don't know enough about them in this particular context to discuss it.

If you wanna go at them without counting on pets for your survival with a controller/dominator, you certainly could buff up your defenses with IOs and resistances with tough and epic shields (controllers even get mez protection that you can perma, and dominators get, of course, domination). But I personally wouldn't go for them in this case, instead I'd pick a corruptor (better damage) or defender (better debuffs, good damage solo nowadays) to outfit with all those extra defenses. Rad and cold continue to be great options for debuffing here, and for blasts the default is to go sonic (lots of -res stacking to buff up damage), fire on corrs (for straight up damage) or maybe ice (to slow enemies to a crawl and it has lots of quick-activating damage too, but less than fire). I'm moderately sure, though, that people can make other combinations work as well. Defenders and corruptors are always welcome in teams (more like hunted down and dragged into teams, actually, from what I've seen).

High damage blasters (fire comes to mind) with Drain Psyche for the regen debuff have soloed GMs (I think Silverado did it, using inspirations to top up his defense - he couldn't make a build, then, with enough recharge, damage and everything else he needed AND soft capped defenses, so he settled for 1 small purple short of the softcap). Maybe a Psi Dom with Drain Psyche, now that their single target blasts got buffed, could do it too, but I really do not know if they'd have enough damage output.

Maybe melee characters could do it too, I've certainly seen them trashing AVs and stuff solo, but I'm not sure even the best can get enough damage output to counter a GM's regen even with whatever weak debuffs they can get their hands on (including envenomed dagger). But maybe it's doable, once again I don't know. If you wanna go that route, I'd ask in the scrapper forums, they're good at this stuff.

Regardless of AT and build, though, I'm pretty sure soloing GMs is gonna require a little (or more than a little) trial and error, some luck (so maybe more than one try even after you have the strategy for that monster down) and there may be some that will be stronger against your damage type or strategy and you might not beat at all.

All of this is without considering incarnate abilites (don't think they've been around long enough for the GM hunters to tell us much about them yet).

As a final note, search for Silverado's threads, he's one of the guys that posted about his AV/GM smacking with a bunch of different ATs, if I remember right.

With my Spines/Dark, external KB never messed up my damage... because she always runs ahead and shoots first! By the time the rest of the team caught up to me, I had grabbed a ton of aggro by mauling the baddies with Throw Spines from afar and Spine Burst in their midst. Only by the time SB did damage were the baddies being scattered by KB from the team, but since they were around me when I activated the power, it still worked out, and there were usually still a few left around me to pull out a needed heal. Then I'd hunt a clump of two or three survivors (hopefully including a boss or two) to rip with Ripper and move on to the next mob, hardly ever even needing to do any cleaning up with my ST attacks (even though it's always a joy impaling the back of some runner from a distance), unless there was an AV involved.

Even her heal, that requires having people around, was hardly ever messed up by KB... After a couple LGTFs and one ITF that she tanked, I think she only died once due to me hitting her heal just after everyone who surrounded her had been blown away by KB and someone hit me from afar with a pretty hard ranged attack. She also died to Hami and once before I figured out about Rommy's stunning rez, but that had nothing to do with KB...

So... Long story short... I now enjoy KB both solo AND in teams, whether I'm the one doing it, or the one meleeing people that are being thrown on their backs.