DrMike2000

The obvious way to get around the cottage rule (which is a good rule IMO, since people do take these powers) is to add a second Tier 3 power to each travel power pool.

It worked for the epics with the Tier 2's.

And I think thats a really good point Wiggz, about why people take travel powers. I'm more and more just relying on jetpacks and teleport temps to get around, and part of that is that none of the travel powers open up anything really attractive.

I used Group Fly on a supergroup of characters I made over two accounts. All the characters on one account had no travel powers, the other account had characters with Group Fly (or PeaceBringer equivalent), Kinetics, Recall Friend and other "taxi" powers.

I came to hate Group Fly.

Trying to fly across a map with either the flier or passenger in the lead and the other on follow would often lead to the passenger getting dropped, no matter how I slotted Group Fly or Swift or anything else.

I like the idea of bestowing flight on teammates, but I really think the way Group Fly currently works is broken, and can't think of any workable alternatives.

"Like you wouldn't believe!" is the short answer.
Empathy excels at big buffs for the selected few, so it makes sense that it makes the most powerful duos.


Dual Empathy means staggered auras (ie one of each up all the time) and perma AB and Fortitude.

With +1000% Recharge and +1000% Recovery (auras +AB) you don't need Stamina, even if you run Assault and Manouvers, which I'd recommend.

With Sonic Blast you're debuffing the most important thing, which is -Res. Two of you are stacking around -120% Res, and adding +69% damage from double Assault and Fortitude, so you should be able to take down common AVs easily enough.

Defensively, Fortitude and Double Manouvers (slotted) and Hover is 38% or so defence to everything. You'll pretty much heal anything that gets through straight back with your Regen.

Skip Absorb Pain and Heal Other, and maybe Resurrection. Get Manouvers and Assault. Slot Fortitude for +Def and auras and AB for +Recharge and you're set.


As for which groups to avoid, there aren't any. Your defence and +regen are universal to all damage types, and your -Res would affect everyone equally.
I played an Emp/NRG duo and avoided Crey due to lack of hard mezzes. You can take Screech and stun Paragon Protectors before they godmode.



Clear Mind and a -KB IO is all you need for mez protection.

I've got one in my Grav/Empath in Psi Tornado, and it triggers quite frequently.

At best its going to be up 1/3 of the time, providing +33% recharge for those long cooldown powers like Hasten. In practice, I doubt its giving more than +20% when spammed on a map for 8.

You can replace this with the recharge buff from a supergroup empowerment station, if you persuade your leader to put one in (or are your own leader). It means ducking into the base every hour, but its a pretty good bonus for a "flavour" buff.

There's all of these:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...prove_Recharge

which you're probably aware of since you're building for perma-Hasten.
Purple sets for sleep and confuse are good cheapies (comparatively), sometimes your choice of epis can open up these. And World of Confusion (Controller/Defender epic) becomes much better with the Contagious Confusion proc, if thats relevant.

And don't forget Geas of the Kind Ones and the villain equivalent, which can give you a shortlived recharge boost (+100% every 25 minutes). These refresh surprisingly quickly on high recharge builds.

Do you mean Disruption Field? The ally-only -Res rings of Saturn?

Yes, you can place them on Phantom Army pets.

Any Defender can start off with:

CJ/Hover, slotted with IOs: 4%
Fighting: Tough w/Steadfast and slotted Weave: 11%
Manouvers, slotted: 5.5%
Fitness will be your 4th pool to run all this, by the way.

for 20.5% Defence to everything.

3 Thunderstrike sets in your single target blasts for an extra 11.25% Ranged Defence.
Red Fortune in Weave and Manouvers adds another 5%, saturating your +2.5% bonuses.
(and these sets are all useful actual enhancements too, no muling)

Thats 36.75% vs Ranged. This leaves you 8.25% away from the Ranged soft cap.

You pick this up via:
World of Confusion with the purple set (+5%)
Stupefy in Boxing (+3.125%)
Blessing of the Zephyr (2 pieces) in Fly/Superjump +1.25%

TADA! capped to range!
Sticking Malaise Illusion in WoC as you level will almost get you there before you hit 50.

[Edit] Mako's Bite is a better fit in Boxing, +3.75% and makes the actual attack useful.

To look at it from another angle, part of the problem is that most characters by the 20s have a 95% chance to hit the enemies they routinely fight. Therefore we spend most of our time hitting up against this invisible barrier of 95%.

With the way that enhancements work now, there is no reason to not slot for accuracy. You can cap any attack out on its primary function (damage or mez) with 3 slots, and then have three to spare, with typically one of them going to accuracy.

Add ins IOs, and it gets better. Pretty much any character I make these days has +20% acc or so global bonuses even if Im shooting for something else, like recvharge or Defence bonuses, AND over 50% native acc in each attack due to the frankenslotting effect.

So all characters, 100% of my playtime, are meant to be very accurate and yet miss vault doors 1 in 20 times.

Has anyone ever given up accuracy in their slotting and felt that they got something worthwhile in return? If so, how?

I think your feelings are pretty much spot on, and Sonic Blast isn't going to suddenly turn a corner as you level further.

You already notice the difference soloing a boss, because you're stacking up a significant -Res through repeated attacks.

On a team you'll impart -20% Res to the masses via Howl, and while that helps out it isn't game-changingly noticeable. No-one's going "Wow! We took that group out in 10 seconds instead of 12!" unless they're sitting there with a stopwatch.

Sonic Blast is the best blast set, but its not going to be a better force multiplier than an actual primary powerset.

(cant see your build, dont have Mids at work. But...)

I'd maybe consider dropping power pool Manouvers for Mind Link if you can get it permanent. It offers much more Defence, free extra To Hit and Psi resistance, and costs 1/4 of the end of the Leadership toggle if you fire it every 90 seconds.

It does require you to click though instead of being fire and forget, and you may need Manouvers for Tactics.

For the record, I'd openly welcome anyone who brought double Manouvers to my team, even if they didn't have Mind Link.

I think you're asking the wrong people.

If YOU think you're an Offender, then you are one. If you acknowledge that your damage matters and consider using your secondary as an important part of your job, you're an Offender.

Out of FF or Sonic, I'd suggest Sonic.

If you're running multiple Radiation Infections, you're probably flooring your chance of being hit most of the time, which would mean that FF contributes very little. The only reason to go FF would be if you dont run Radiation Infection during most fights (and it does have a long animation, so thats a viable style).

Sonic on the other hand will soiften the blows that do get through by adding Resistance, and also provide extra -Res debuffs. Contrary to what you said, you can never have enough of these, since each additional debuff will up the damage even more. Well, up to a -Res cap which I doubt you'll reach.

Basically, go Sonic out of the two. You'll hit the +Def softcap well befoee you hit the -Res cap.

Purple sets are good because they provide +10% Recharge for 5 pieces. (Mostly, SoulBound Allegiance in Voltaic Sentinel is an exception, dont bother with that. Get Call To Arms instead or Expedianet Reinforcement instead.)

I'd consider respeccing into the Psi Epic Pool, because you have a sleep and a confuse in there these days, both of which take the (relatively) cheaper purple sets. Stick the Unbreakable Constraint set in one hole (Dominate or Tesla cage) and Basilisk's Gaze in the other.

This won't be cheap, by the way, but recharge is well worth chasing on an Empath.

On the upside - Power Sink gives you pretty much unlimited endurance, and you get a Stealth power that doesn't suppress during combat.

On the downside - your defences are a bit sup-par, and you have virtually no protection against Psi and Toxic.



Say you want to make a character with a Personal Force Field that protects them from harm, you could go Energy Aura or Super Reflexes.

Super Reflexes with SOs will give 31% defence to everything except untyped Psi attacks like Mind Control. It also gives almost complete resistance to defence debuffs.

Energy Aura with SOs gives you:
26.5% vs Smash/Lethal
33% vs Energy
22.8% vs Negative
30% vs Fire/Cold
6% vs Psi and Toxic
and some small resistances (which also give you a place to stick the Steadfast IO in)
and you have to be invisible to get 6% of this, which may be a concept-breaker.

Energy Aura has a new advantage over SR, in that the Kinetic Dampener temp power adds to its defence (+16% S/L), very handy as a low level god mode if you craft one.

But, the unlimited end in very nice. So think of it as a more offensive less defensive variant on SR.

Filters for the enhancement stores would be a great feature, either as tabs or as a set of checkboxes to hide unusables or other categories.

Yep, Sonic/Dark is way better than Sonic/Energy for self protection, especially if you take Torrent. You've got the KB and hefty -To Hit and a self heal. That's a really cool combination in fact...

It would also provide really good layered defence to your team through the -To Hit debuffs, upping your team protection value to more like 80% at a guess.

Wouldn't it make more sense as a melee set for Scrappers, Tankers, Stalkers and Brutes, instead of a power pool?

As a power pool, people would be combining it with Claws (or Dual Blades or Fiery Melee or whatever) rather than replacing those sets with a more bestial fighting style.

FF provides 95% protection, including Psi and End Drain, and no offensive buffs.
Sonic proivdes around 60% protection, with Psi and End drain holes (except Liquefy), but increases team damage by 30 to 60%.

Both sets leave you as the most vulnerbale member of the team. Force Field provides you with the means to protect yourself when you do draw aggro off a Freak Tank, through Force Bolt ot PFF. Sonic doesn't. So I'd recommend a secondary to go with Sonic that allows you to protect yourself, which really rules out Rad Blast. (Plus, you get good -Def debuffs in Liquefy for when you do want it.)

Sonic Blast is probably the best secodnary for either, because its the best Defender blast set full stop. It worked really well for me with Force Fields by providing some good offensive buffs. For Sonic Resonance, I went Energy Blast, which allowed me to keep the bad guys away. I was very happy with both pairings and took them to 50.

Who are super? Powers like Twilight Grasp? NPCs?

Its just struck me how perfect Fortunatas are for making aquatic characters like Aquaman.

Agility/toughness - check!
Telepathic attacks - check!
Melee attacks for moderate strength - check!
Poison Darts like a sea urchin - check!

Has anyone ever made a character along these lines?

Bummer. I'd been wondering how to do this for my upcoming Energy Aura Brute, who doesn't turn invisible, but does have a force field.

I guess SR is a better fit mechanically there, but I wanted to try something new. I'll find that extra defence elsewhere....

Other games get by with all attacks never missing. So having hyper-accurate well slotted attacks never missing doesn't seem too big a stretch.

Players already have a streakbreaker which NPCs dont get (I think?)

I'd be in favour of dropping the 5% flat miss chance imposed on player attacks altogether. If you have Tactics, global acc bonuses and good slotting, why should you miss a street thug standing in quicksand 1 time out of 20?
Missing a MoG'd Paragon protector or Rikti Drone, or a Force Fielded enemy, sure. But I'm struggling to see what the 5% miss on most player powers really adds to the game other than occasional frustration. Sometimes big frustration, eg a stun attack misses just before a Fake Nem pops his bubble.

The 5% hit chance at the other end of the scale is cool. I've played enough soft-capped characters to understand the thrill of the occasional hit getting through when you're waltzing through a horde of enemies untouched.

Powers like Twilight Grasp do give me thought for pause though. Would they become overpowered if they always hit in normal situations? They'd still have a chance of missing higher defence enemies, so I think not.

I think the alternate animations system put in for Superstrength and Martial Arts is the beginning of what you're asking for.

Given enough time and resources, the devs could fit Fire Imps or any other power with a number of different animations - the current Y pose, a chest-spawn and so on.

Alternate animations could in theory involve runes and so on for a more "magical" appearance, but even then you're portraying just a single vision of what magic looks like.

This isn't available right now not because of dev arrogance or them underestimating our imagination, but because it takes time to implement.

So yeah, hang in there, I guess. We have more customisation than we used to, and I see that trend continuing

Yeah, along with pool and epic customisations, I guess.

Are there any other effects in the same bag as Domination? ie archetype rather than powerset independent? I cant think of any...

(Although I want to make my Controller say "SERVED" instead of "OVERPOWER" )

My level 50 Grav/Emp has it slotted in Psionic Tornado. I've got recharge coming out of my ears, so I'm often spamming Psi Tornado and Crushing Field as my attack chain pretty much. I often play +0/x8 maps, and see it go off very quite regularly in my combat attributes window.

I havent done any serious analysis on how often its up, but I'd guess around 20% of the time when I'm in full combat. I have noticed the auras coming up more quickly when I fight non-stop, but then again, I have hasten to factor in too, since that isn't perma.

Yeah, I'd only slot it in AoEs.
Footstomp is a good idea.

I'd suggest for efficiency that you go Emp/Ice, Emp/Psi or Emp/Elec over a */Emp Controller only if you want to slot and use the AoE damage.

A Controller primary will do a much better job of controlling than a Defender secondary with controls in it.

But, if you want the Empathy powers earlier, or don't want a pet following you around (and they can be very concept-breaking) a Defender with a control secondary will definitely do the job, just not as well.