DrMike2000

Yeah, the new missions are very cool, but maybe work a bit better solo than on a team?

I did the Villain side Dark Mirror arc on my own the other day, and broadcast to see if anyone wnated to help me take out a few Freaks, since thats what the next mission suggested. Aussie Monday night, no-one bit, and I was kind of glad when I entered the mission to find it was a single corridor with two spawns, followed by another long conversation with McD outside.

I did think at the time "I'm glad no-one joined me. I'd have felt like I mislead them."

Solo, its ncie to have all the extras. Often a team is enough entertainment on its own with little extra required from the game in terms of dialog or story.


Either way, I like where the devs are going with this. Having a mix of complex and simple is awesome.

Yeah, I think it would.

The "Stop 30 Fir Bolg" mission flips the value of a few powers on their head - suddenly Bonfire is incredibly useful.

Similarly Ajax in the Villainside I17 missions would probably have a rough time with Repulsion Field or Repel - you can't kill him but I bet you can knock him around indefinitely.

PFF would be incredibly handy for fighting Protean or the resulting fires you have to escape from.


I don't know if increasing the number of missions like this would be a good thing - I quite enjoy playing the game as a minion-mincing exercise most of the time. It sounds lame, but I found Champions involved too much thinking most of the time with its more varied mission objectives and goals. I spend all day doing clever stuff, and just want to switch off and indiscriminately arrest big groups when I'm playing.

But, it seems like there is a trend with the newer missions to provide more variety, which is fun, and none of that is going to stop me from doing some good old brain-dead radio missions when I want a more basic playstyle. So bring it on!

Level 40 Miracle Heals were insane redside a few weeks back, recipes selling at 30 million and crafted IOs at 90 million or something.

I spotted this because I got a recipe drop, and decided just for once to craft it, with that mark-up.

It got me thinking why is this piece so expensive?
Well, if you stick the Miracle +Recovery IO in Health you can then replace one of the Heal Ios in there with this pice to score an extra +2% Recovery.
If you're doing this, you;'re obviously loaded anyway because you can afford the Miracle unique, it goes ina power almost everyone takes regardless of archetype, and almost everyone could do with a bit more recovery.

So yeah, thats a good place to start looking. What can everyone use to boost pretty much any high end build?
I used to craft low level Performance Shifter +End procs (<25 means cheap salvage). Same applies there I guess, if you take Stamina and have a free slot, you'll like it.

22 and 23 are too early to get any set bonuses happening, but frankenslotting will give you a good boost if you can be bothered with it.

On my PeaceBringer I ended up with a ton of Thunderstrike (6 piece) and Positron's Blast (5 piece) sets. As well as some pretty awesome ranged defence, around 25% or so when everyhting was added up, and some decent recharge, I had around +20% Recovery, which allowed me to forego Fitness, and insane global accuracy, like +80% or so.

This was very nice, in that it allowe me to hit Rikti drones reliably with my single target attacks, and fitted with the whole "speed of light" theme of the character.

I'd gone tri-form.
I'd slotted out the Nova AoE's (1 acc, 3 dam) and the human single target blasts (Ebon Eye, Shadow Blast and Gravimetric Snare) and Gravity Well, and got 3 recharge into Sunless Mire.

Dwarf no extra slots, both the power itself and the inherents. It performed fine when I managed to make the transition.

By the sounds of it, I'd get more mileage out of slotting Nova up at this level rather than human form?

Yep. I made an ON macro for some of my characters to turn all toggles back on in the right order, like mez protection first.

I found it incredibly handy - it would be kind of nice if the game had some native support for this.

Oh yeah!

Fire and Dark both got Tough to halve the incoming S/L damage. I really felt the difference, and swapped out the tier 2 attack for Boxing/Kick without feeling the loss too badly.

My Invulnerablity tanker took it to cap S/L resists. I'm not sure if I really needed it here, this was more just to say I can and see those 90% numbers onscreen.

My Willpower tanker has it and I swear by it once again. It halves incoming S/L damage. I was in Colin Larson's Freakshow arc when I picked it up, and the difference against crowds of Swipers was very noticeable.

I havent taken Weave for any of them though.

You could swap that Ragnorak +Dam in Arctic Breath for the Ragnorak Chance for Knockdown proc. Thats still +90% damage, or swap out the Dam/End maybe and keep capped damage.

It not only saves you a bit of inf, but it looks incredibly cool when you blow people off their feet. I have that proc in Fire Breath on my Blaster and love it

Yeah, its good to check out those powers that conventional wisdom says to ignore.

My problems with Repel stem not so much from the power itself as the failure of the rest of the Kinetics set - namely that a powerset that's all about movement and fast-paced action demands that you stand still next to the enemy so much.

Consider for a moment if Transfusion worked like Twilight Grasp. The Kinetics defender could then risk melee/standing still for the reward of offensive boosts (Fulcrum Shift and extra endurance) but wouldn't be relying on it for their main source of survival.

It would let you act much more like a traditional speedster, or Speedball if you took Repel.

If you solo, I highly recommend grabbing a hold (like Char), which rules out Force Mastery.

On the other hand, PFF is very nice to have especially if you have Aid Self, and Force of Nature allows you to cap your S/L resistance with temp Invulnerability.

You could try for Smashing Lethal Defence, and boost it with the Kinetic Dampener temp power, which gives +16% S/L for 30 minutes per crafting, and doesn't break concept like Ice Armour does.

Here's the list of sets that will help you:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...ashing_Defense

I see:

Kinetic Combat in Fire Sword - 3.75%
Enfeebled Operation in Ring of Fire - 4.06% all up.

Take Fighting for:
Kinetic Combat in Boxing (4 slot): 3.75%
SteadFast IO in Tough: +3% all over
Weave: 5.5%

Combat Jumping (1 slot def IO): 2%

Thats 22% vs S/L, +16 from the temp shield, giving you 38% all up. I've been doing something similar on my Arachnos Soldier, using the temp power to take alpha's and so on, and its workjed rather nicely, as long as you remember to turn it off.

Now, I haven't touched your PBAoE's:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...g_PBAoE_Damage

They can take:
MultiStrike: cheap, and gives small Melee and AoE defence
Obliteration: very costly and gives +3.75% vs Melee
Eradication: medium costly. 4 of these give +end, +E/N def and +Health.
Scirrocco: Aoe and Psi defence.

I'd go Eradication. they're affordable and the E/N defence you build up will help fill a hole, and the extra End and health is nice. And frankenslot or use IOs to fill the gaps for the actual power stats, like end reduction.

If you pop 4 of these in Irradiate, Blazing Aura, Hot Feet, Combustion and FSC, thats 15.65% E/N defence.
Now get either 3(2.5%) or 6 (3.75%) Thunderstrikes in Neutrino Bolt, X Ray Eyes and Cosmic Burst and you have an extra 11.25% E/N for a grand total of 27% or so.
Oh, + the bonuses from Weave, Steadfast and Combat Jumping, more like 37.5%!!!

The Kinetic Dampener also gives you 30% Energy Resistance, which is nice.

So, that's my advice. I've probably asked you to six slot everything there. I'll let you figure out the details

Personal Force Field meshes particularly well with Aid Self (or even Portable Rapid Regeneration Devices ).

I loved it on my Sonic/MM blaster for that very reason - bubble up and heal a couple of times when things got rough. Temp Invulnerbaility was a slightly substandard shield (no third type of damage, just S/L) and I tend to be stingy with powers liek Forc eof Nature and save them up for rainy days that never come.

But PFF made the choice of epic pool very well worth it.

The first thing that jumped out on your original build is that the ally shields weren't very well slotted.

Between them and Manouvers and Arctic Fog you can make your whole team sit at 40% Defense or so. That's ridiculous defence right there without the need for a death.

Trying to give your team a high defence via Vengeance seems kind of counterproductive when you've got Ice Shield and Glacial Shield underslotted.

I find the rest of the set pretty good, but skipped Eagle's Claw on my scrapper, purely because of the animation time.

I'm currently using it on my Stalker with the alternate animation, and it still needs help because it takes too long. The stun is nice, but when it takes 3 seconds to deliver I find I prefer to open with Cobra Strike on dangerous leiutenants just to be sure of a quick reliable stun, despite the lack of damage.

At 3 seconds it also eats too much of Build Up time.

I'd like stores to have a couple of filters, similar to the Search window.

So like the way you choose say "Sharkhead Island" and "21-30","25-35" in the search window, you could select to only see "Magic" and "Damage","Accuracy", and only Magic SOs or Magic/* DO's or TOs would appear, and only those that enhance damage or acc. Both categories would have an "All" like the search window does.

This would not only help find the enhancements you want, but make scrolling through Ghost Falcon's lists much easier

None of the other six powers provide offensive force multipliers.

My point was:

In choosing Defender over say Blaster, you've opted to take a lower base damage.
In choosing FF over, say Sonic, you've chosen a set that multiplies only the defensive abilities of your team rather than the offensive abilities.
It then sucks IMO to have most of that defence removed by a common enemy group (even within limited level ranges) due to something that may have been an oversight. Force Fields initially launched with an oversight that made it only give typed Defence, thus benefitting some allies (eg Ice Tank)more than others (SR scrapper). This has been fixed. Is the lack of DDR oversight or design? I don't know.

Westley, as our resident Force Fields guru, do you think the set would benefit from DDR? Would it overpower it? How would the added DDR to allies affect other defense sets with low DDR such as shields?

I dont think it wouold overpower Force Fields to provide some Def debuff, even if its just 50% once slotted in Dispersion Bubble.

I've never been a big fan of the way the bubbles pop against certain enemy groups, Earth Thorn Casters being the worst example.

You've given up your whole primary to providing team defence, it would be nice if it worked more consistently against common enemy groups like CoT at all ranges.

That would still leave To Hit buffs like Devouring Earth emanators, but they're more localised and easier to neuter, since they belong to leiutenants rather than minions.

There are plenty of Defender powers already that force you into Melee range.

Most of Kinetics does.
Electrical Blast and Rad Blast have PBAoE's.
Traps works best when you get in there to lay Poison Gas Traps and Acid Mortars close up.
Hurricane requires melee range.

I would really love to see some Assault sets ported to Defenders and Corrupters.

I grabbed a few temp powers to help me out - Kinetic Dampener meshes nicely with the Manouvers toggle.

Stun grenades add extra surviviability and Hand Grenades add an extra AoE, turning pissed off groups into dead or KB'd groups.

Its a tough AT to solo though. Your team buffs are weak solo, and weak AoE damage isnt ideal either - both are much more effective on teams.

I'm at 24 now and feeling much more powerful, even as a "Huntsman" build keeping the arachnos rifle as my main weapon.

I hopped on my Warshade (now 22) after a long break last night. I'd had the idea of giving him a female form, conceptualised as a separate character in the symbiote, kind of like Starhawk/Aleta from Guardians of the Galaxy. I treated myself to the Science pack and spoke to Serge to do the costume slot mission. I thought "Yay! Stygian Circle! this should be a cakewalk..."

I had the worse time defeating 30 Tsoo I've ever had! Honour dictates I go to Talos and pick on even-cons, but I think I died 5 times before I was done.

Now, I know:

- Tsoo are tricky mobs at level 22, with the mezzing Ink Men and Sorcerors often giving 3 priority targets per group.
- Warshades shine on teams rather than solo
- I dont have Gravitic Emanation yet, which will provide a nice margin of safety
- I was rusty to say the least, hadn't played my 'shade for over 3 months, and my PeaceBringer has been on the shefl at 50 for much longer.

One of the biggest problems I found was the time to switch forms - it takes so long to switch, and I often end up getting beaten up during that dead time. Even worse, getting mezzed while switching to Dwarf got me killed once at least. Plus, all that form switching made the human shields less useful than they could have been due to the extra activation time to switch them back on.

I dunno, the whole experience made me feel like this AT comes so close to having a brilliant unique playstyle, but just falls short because of these issues. Faster form-change animations and suppressing human toggles (rather than switching them off) while in forms would be a huge improvement.

Thinking back to my PeaceBringer now, I dont think I used the forms much beyond level 30.
Does this match other people's experiences of Warshades, or Kheldians in general?

Pretty solid, but a few points I'd change:

Levitate is a better damage attck than Domination (does about 1/3 more damage), and Domination's a better control than Levitate. So, I'd slot Levitate Acc,Acc, Rech and 3 Damage, and Dominate 2 Acc, 2 Rech, 2 Hold if youre using SOs.

I'd give Confuse more slots, ad take some out of Force Bolt. Force Bolt just needs a default Acc, you have way better controls, whereas Confuse should at least have some recharge in it for confusing bosses quickly. Preferably 1 Acc, 2 Rech, 1 Confuse miniumum.

Mass Confusion needs recharge, preferably 3. You've got 4 confuses in there, so you're breaking the ED cap* of 3 SOs. Aim for 2 Acc, 2 Rech, 1 or 2 Confuse.

Fly will cap your flight speed with 2 slots. One would be enough, so get the slots from there.

Repulsion Bomb's stun has only a 40% chance of going off, and you dont need the extra control that badly on a Mind Controller. Its a nice source of AoE dmage, but if you aren't into damage, I'd slot it one Acc and keep it in your back pocket for emergencies.



* ED = Enhancement Diversification. It means after 3 SO's, your returns from enhancements are greatly diminished. So never slot more than 3 of the same type in a power

Whats an MVP, by the way?

Psi Tornado's a standard AoE that benefits a lot from frankenslotting, since you want a good dose of damage, end redux, accuracy and recharge, and maybe the Force Feedback proc in there.

I've quite enjoyed it on my Gravity/Empath controller, it feels very much like a superior AoE version of Lift.

What would you play it with, ie what secondary? Force Fields maybe? Traps if/when it proliferates to Controllers is an obvious choice.
Beyond that you're getting into dual-concept characters (which is fine) eg Riot/Kinetics as a superfast cop, but doesn't a police dog become redundant at that point?

I've already got a Traps/AR Corrupter and an Arachnos Soldier who cover the super-police/Judge Dredd style character (and a DP/Devices blaster sitting around who could do the same thing)
Conceptually all use some kind of non-lethal hi-tech tasing rounds/rubber bullets to arrest their targets, along with the gas grenades and tasers and other gimmicks that come with the sets (and Temp power Stun Grenades!). So 'Riot Control' is already quite possible using other ATs.

Using a gun primarily for a low-damage control set seems kind of counter-intuitive to me.

So yeah, nothing concept-wise grabs me with this set, and nothing in the mechanics you've outlined seems really new.

[EDIT] Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Riot Control is a bad idea. I just wouldn't play it myself in a hurry.

I really wasn't expecting this when I logged in this morning.
This is brilliant news!

And I'm another unrepentant roleplayer who's always favoured the merge.