DrMike2000

I thought Sonic Resonance straight away.

Its a very low maintenance team-oriented set. You pop Dispersion and Disruption Field on, shield the team every 4 minutes and blast as much as endurance will let you in between.

It offers less protection than Force Fields but offers good -Resistance debuffs that significantly increase defeat speed.

It can feel a bit weak at first. It doesn't really come into its own until the early 20s because
- its an End Hog, and Stamina and SO's help with that
- the -Res becomes more valuable (compared to +Dam powers) as people get damage SO's slotted.
- the +Res powers stack better with allies native +Res once everyones slotted up.

My second choice for your criteria would be Force Fields.

I'm not sure how this would work ingame, but I love your descriptions.

You're trying to go for the idea of a character who can't control their powers, but when their friends are threatened they erupt to the surface? This is cool for emaotional impact in a story, but could lead to some odd behaviour in game.

You've probably seen (or been) a Brute chasing Fury, running to the next group to get beaten on to keep that meter high. Imagine someone doing this on a team but trying to get their allies beaten up all the time. Aggroing extra groups and herding them onto teammates with a damage aura, so their teammates draw aggro and take damage. It could get annoying pretty quick.

The Fighting pool can give you +9% Defence to all (3 from Steadfast, 6 from slotted Weave), plus +4.6% Defence vs AoE from 5 Aegis in Tough, and +2.5% Ranged from a Red Fortune set in Weave.

Melee Defence wont be an issue if you're happy to lean on Parry, so this gets you over 10% in the 2 positions you need to cap.

And the actual Resistance in Tough is nice to have at times, especially combined with an orange pill or two.

Ice Storm does Blaster level damage, so get some damage enhancements in there. Its going to be a star performing damage power on an all Defender team, and the main benefactor of any +Recharge you build up on a FF/Ice.

Same with Repulsion Bomb - slot that for damage rather than stun.

Bitter Ice Blast is your heaviest damage ST attack - replace what youve got in there with 5 pieces of Decimation to get a good damage slotting and keep the 6.25% recharge bonus.

If you're always going to be running with a couple of Kineticists who'll keep your damage capped ignore this advice.

And replace Manouvers with Insulation Shield. If you ever plan to fight Malta or Carnies, your team will love you for the 86% End Drain resistance, to say nothing of the Ranged and AoE defence that keep Ringnmistress Psi attacks and Titan burn patches off you. You can still slot your LotG +Recharge in there.

But you really should move the slots from PFF to your ally shields and Dispersion Bubble. Give each of them the equivalent of 3 Defence SOs, and you'll really notice the difference.

Lightning Field doesn't have any -Recovery.

Power Sink has a 30% chance of causing 4 seconds of -100% recovery, as do many of the Electrical Manipulation secondary powers.

Have a look here for details:
http://www.redtomax.com/data/powers/...y_Manipulation

Short Circuit is the usual source of reliable long term -Rec in a sapper build.

So, you will see a lot of damage mitigation between the two of you draining the group and applying intermittent -Rec, but it wont be absolute, they'll occasionally get a tick back in between Lightning Fields and squeeze an attack in.

You should see quite a noticeable effect though in terms of dropping the incoming damage.

Its a cool idea for a trio you've got there, by the way. Do the two of you plan to colour your Lightning Fields differently?

No kidding? I never realised that the Siren's Call temps worked outside of PVP zones. I think I'd checked out the Arena temp powers once, figured out that they only worked in PVP and assumed the worse.

That suits my plans even better...

Oh yeah. You no longer need to bunch over and deliver a deadly blow by punching with both fists whilst crouching. Which is a very good thing. I love the alternate animation.

Im also a big fan of the alternate Eagle's Claw - it works for martial artists who are just that and not super-gymnastic Spidey/Beast types.

Resurrection powers aren't literally raising the dead, just waking someone up after they've got stunned and fallen over. After all, you can buy a pale green pill from the shops for 200 inf that has the same effect.

A good sharp shock to the nervous system makes sense in that context.

From what Ive played of Pain Dom (up to 35 on a Corrupter) I have to say I quite like it as it is. It initially looked a bit poor on paper, but I've been amazed how useful Soothing Aura is as an animation-time free heal. Whether the powers make 100% sense in terms of concept is irrelevant in some way becasue the game mechanics mesh together so well. And I tend to re-interpret powersets a bit anyway rather than stick to the spirit of the powerset and power names.

I tend to do it before level 27. At that point Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact become available for attacks, and generally work just as well for attacks with good set bonuses on top.

For some powers it works better than sets. My Pain Domination corrupters have 4 x Res/Rech in World of Pain for example, to max out recharge and resistance in only 4 slots.

Similarly ShadowFall and Steamy mist get 2 x Def/End, 2 x Res/End and a Res IO and Def IO to get close to maxing out Def and Res and End reduction.

I've often gone 4 x Dam/something for slot-hungry characters for their AoE's.

eg 2 x Acc/Dam, 2 x Dam/Rech, or swap one out for a Dam/End depending on global accuracy and End management tools and so on.

Frankenslotting will make you character about 50% more effective easily, over plain IOs, SOs. This is the biggest bnonus you get from using inventions. The leap from frankenslotting to using sets is smaller, maybe an extra 25% efficiency with good sets.

Cool idea.

I really like the idea of an electrical Rez power, and having an Aoe hold around it is kind of cool (similar to Thermal's ally rez doing damage and stun)

The combination of a +Regen Aura and Resistance shields is quite nice, along with the spot heal from Energise. However, I'm not sure about it getting Psi and End Drain resistance in the ally shields, mainly because Sonic Resonance and Thermal don't.
Currently, this is one of the benefits of Force Fields over these two, and FF sacrifices any offensive buff in order to do so. You've got Siphon Current as a team endurance helper for Carnie missions and other end draining scenarios, I'd leave it at that.

Synaptic Overload's -Special is currently only available to Poison Masterminds and Cold Domination users. Since this is you hard target zapper, maybe make it -End, -Rec, -Regen instead? We could really do with more decent End drain powers, and if the target's unable to use its powers, -Dmg and -Special don't really matter.

I have to say, it really grinds my gears when the devs give any enemy protection against rare and situational attacks like this.

No-one can accuse the cage powers of being overpowered, since they are so inimical to 99% of the play that goes on, which is steamrollering PvE content. Taking away the ability of these powers to work in one special situation where they could be extremely useful just seems a bit mean-spirited. Even if the cages allowed you to trivialise the Romulus encounter, it wouldn't mean everyone would go out and build a FF-er or Sonic Defender.

If you're looking for a group to fight with an E/N/F/C defence character, Circle of Thorns would be a pretty good place to start. They have plenty of Fire, Cold and Negative attacks, and can be fought on tap at any level range via radio missions.


With regards to S/L defence, this got me thinking as I sold a Kinetic Combat triple for 89 million redside the other day...

The new Kinetic Dampener temp power offers 16% S/L defence in half hour doses. It costs a couple of million to get one maybe, including the rare salvage. Say a character gets to 50 in around 150 hours, they'd chew through around 300 of these at a cost of say 300 million all up, which might still be cheaper than 4 four-packs of Kinetic Combat (=15% s/l).

These are all handwaving figures, of course. You may take longer to level or want to keep playing at 50. You could obviously not turn your Dampener on if you feel you don't need it, say you're teaming with a couple of Widows or a FF-er or whatever. It might be much cheaper to bid ahead for the lowbie ones and use cheap rare salvage.

There's the inconvenience. You might have to end up RP-ing your character as incontinent, and they have to use the toilets in the University every half hour

An afterthought: there is also the S/L shield temp power from day jobs. logging out for 21 days in a PVP zone is a pain since its often a zone or two away, but logging out in an arena also gives you an END bonus. It could cover the cost for the first 2 hours of each play session depending how often you play.

Electrical Blast has 100% chance of some end drain on everything. Partial end drain is like a mag 1 hold - useless until stacked hard enough at which point it becomes absolute mitigation.

Knockback will temporarily stop a Boss with one hit, which a mag 1 mez definitely won't.
So 1 attack with 30% chance to KB (Power Blast) is roughly equivalent to 3 or 4 attacks that will stack a 100% hold? sort of? kind of?

Toxic Blast with the puke animation. Nice
I was thinking of the grey ball weapon used on Mr. Incredible, but have no idea what to call it. Goo Blast? Muck Blast?


Blast sets already have some pretty impressive control.

Say you're a gutsy solo Blaster looking at a +2 Boss. Ice blast has about 2 seconds of unheld aggro-time before the boss is held.
An Electrical Blaster is 1 recharge of Tesla Cage away from perma-holding the boss, about 5 seconds with slotting?

A Mag 1 set would require you to unload 4 atacks on the boss before he stopped hitting you, which would take at least 5 seconds, right?

Once you've got them held, Blasters typically have quite a touch-and-go feeling of keeping them held in my experience, even with an extra hold like Shocking Bolt thrown in. Thats roughly what I'd be aiming for here - a bit of setup time and a sustained barrage with maybe 1 SO worth of Hold enhancement could just about hold a +2 boss, with the odd miss (or Carnie phase or whatever) giving them a bit of wriggle room to attack.

Power Boost would maybe extend this to keeping two bosses contained?

A Controller on the other hand, has a 20% chance of holding a boss before they even notice them, and then either 4 seconds (ST hold rechareg with slotting) or their AoE hold to sela the deal, from which point the Boss will never move again, even if you miss or get briefly mezzed yourself.

I doubt this would step on a Controller's toes any worse than an Ice Blaster already does.

As for AoE - being able to keep a pack of minions perma-stunned or held would probably be too much (even though anyone can do that with a temp power). We currently have Dark Pit on a long timer and Short Circuit with all its wobbly flaws (need 10s exposed to multiple melee targets to drain a group), and AoE knockbacks like Energy Blast, which scatter groups to avoid perma-mez.

Some options are:
- Two AoE's, only one gets the stun, and it can't be perma'd. So its really a tool for stacking, either with allies or your ST blasts.

- Two AoEs with Mag 1 stun but longish recharge. This could get tricky with purpled out high end builds....

- AoEs dont have the secondary effect.

- AoE's get a less than 100% chance of applying the stun.

Any of these could prevent you from making Flashfire and its sibling powers obsolete.

PVP is another matter, and one I know very little about. I do know that holds work in a very different manner there though, with suppression and resistacne rather than protection for melee-ers.

Just an odd idea that popped into my head...

Imagine a blast set with Mag 1 holds on all the attacks as a secondary effect. ie two hits on a minion would hold it, 3 on a lieutenant or 4 on a boss. They could be reasonably long-lived (10 seconds or so) so that with some slotting for recharge and hold duration you could have a decent chance of holding a boss that had your undivided attention.

This came from thinking about Electrical Blast again in the big "tedious" thread here. Ice's Recharge debuff, Energy's knockback and Dark's To Hit debuff all mean that if you concentrate your fire on a hard target with the intent of damaging them, you reduce their damage output one way or another. A single hit wont do much, but multiple ones will add up.

I've always though Electrical Blast's end drains should do this, and have a bit more oomph to the end drain in its single target attacks.

It occurred to me that a cumulative hold could have the same effect.
Maybe a Mag 1 stun would be better, so it wouldn't stack so well with Hold procs like Devastation or Lockdown?

Would it be overpowered to have a Mag 1 stun/hold on the AoE's?

If you were to make a Blast set like this, what theme would suit it?

Electrical Blast really needs looking at.

Swapping out the standard Tier 3 blast for Voltaic Sentinel isn't too bad a change. It messes up your burst damage a bit, which matters most to Blasters, but the set has plenty of other tools for neutralising threats. If this kink has to go somewhere, Electrical Blast isn't a bad place (Fire Blast for example, would really suffer if it lost Blaze to a Flaming Sentinel).

The real problem is the way end drain has been implemented so that the only meaningful amount comes from a very long animation PBAoE. Animation times weren't taken into account when balancing back at the start of the game, so it may have the 3 second one just because someone thought it looked right.

As originally designed, Short Circuit could be six-slotted to fully drain a group by itself, ED put paid to that. The recent-ish nerf to Power Boost suggests that the devs dont wnat Blasters draining whole groups of bosses in one shot, and fair enough.

But why oh why can't the single target blasts do a bit of decent drain, instead of a piddly 7% ?

Speedsters:

My Speedster was a Kinetics/Electric Defender, and could thus zip around in combat using Siphon Speed, and made good use of the Sands of Mu temp power. It wasn't a great recreation of super-speeding, in that a lot of Kinetics powers work best if you stand still right next to an enemy. Running around at boosted speeds during combat often means mis-positioned Transfusions followed by defeat
A Ninja-running scrapper would probably work better to be honest.

Cosmics:

For the standard Marvel Universe style cosmic character (eg Eternals, Silver Surfer) who can use cosmic energy to fire concussive blasts, boost their strength and durability or transmute matter, I always liked Sonic/Energy Defenders. Sonic Resonance gives you some personal survivability via Dispersion, the ability to transmute matter through all the +Res and -Res you're throwing around, and Energy Blasts are just cosmic, nuff said. Plus all the Aegis sets give you the big Fire/Cold/AoE defence necessary to survivie in space

Conceptually one of the more powerful characters I've made, but an incredibly poor solo-er. This still felt right though.

Shapechangers:

I made a Peacebringer. I started off trying to make extra forms that looked like alternate light-energy bodies to mix it up, but ended up just using the costume slots as copioes of my other characters in the same SG.

I thought about a Mystique-ish MA/Regen scrapper once, and using alternate slots for clawed hands, wings etc, but never actually carried this one out, since I had two other martial artists on the go.

I see what you're getting at, 2Sly4U.

I regularly use powersets in ways that aren't strictly what it says on the label, eg "Sonic Resonance" for characters who manipulate atomic bonds, "Radiation Emission" for a stage magician who wouldn't cause Geiger counters to blip, and so on.

Say for my Magician, other players should definitely see "Radiation Infection" instead of "Bad Luck Charm", since thats a common language.

If I want to call it that I can already do so either in chat or use my biography space to explain what my powers really are.

And like saist says, the TTP has to be considered. (BaB's phrase that rhymes with "time to Venus" - the amount of time before someone starts sticking rude words in there )

You know the crystals in Oranebega maps?

I can't help but think if that tech could be extended to make the Netherworld a truly scary place, a bit like Hazard Zones used to be.

For example, have a blanket -100% Recovery debuff in the zone, with the odd ray of light coming from the sky that grants a +100% Recovery buff to counter the debuff.
(I'm picturing something a bit like Act IV in Diablo II as a basis...)

Outside the light pools, most characters will still recover a bit due to Stamina, but it will be a struggle.

Maybe have a Perception debuff/counter debuff instead if the zone is foggy like Astoria.
Even a slow damage tick across the zone could work, or regular damage objects like the red crystals.

I havent got here yet.

When I do, I could probably spare to lose Hover on my Grav/Emp Controller, although the small defence and combat manouverability are nice. I'd have to think on that one.

My Superjumping Fire/SS tanker really didn't need CJ...

I've got a few teleporters who could definitely skip the pre-reqs, but I dont think any of them are really tight for powers.

And why shouldn't they all come with recomendations for use?
In this particular case (Aegis in Sonic Haven) it really doesn't do what I expected it to do. And I'm a games programmer who frequents these boards and Red Tomax etc., so what chance does the average player have?

These uniques vary between expensive and astronomical in price, and you need a respec to unslot them, so its not really fair to expect players to test out the effects for themselves.

You see plenty of threads on these boards asking these questions repeatedly. Today or yesterday I think there was a question about the Numina proc in health, was there not?

So do you see "hazy" as just the way it is now, or as a good design decision?