DrMike2000

I guess I was looking at this from the perspective of a new player, Dave. The specialist knowledge is below isn't really apparent form playing the game:

- in 22 levels time, you'll need a million or two to outfit your character
- you won't be able to afford it just with the influence you make from doing missions
- you can memorise a recipe by crafting it repeatedly, and then make the generic IOs much cheaper
- doing so requires pairs of IOs eg level 25 and 30.
- to see how well you're going with the memorisation, check your Badges tab under Invention
- Alchemical Silvers can be bought for much less than 100,000 (a common last 5 prices to see villain side)
- those big inspirations that they give you and tell you to use in the tutorial aren't remotely necessary for completing the mission, and can be sold on the Black Market for more money than you'll make by level 6 or 10 or whatever.
- they arent normal inspiration drops. You won't see another one of them for some time.
- all this info is avaialble here on the forums or at www.paragonwiki.com

All I'm saying is there will always be people who don't know this.

I agree with you, making money in game is easy. I made a billion on Heroes. I then started on Villains a few months back, and struggled to save up for my first level 20 Acc IO recipe and watched it snowball into 2, 4, ten at a time and now I'm rolling in it on both sides. But I did that armed with specialist knowledge. It would be wrong of me to extrapolate that no-one should ever have money problems in-game ever again.

You're talking about toggle attacks, basically?
To boil it down and abstract it away from the mech-suit concept.

As in, you select a target, activate the toggle, and the attack then ticks away at the target like a ranged single targettted version of Blazing Aura or Lightning Field?

What happens when you change targets? Would that deactivate the toggle?

That sounds very do-able. Telekinesis from Mind Control does something very similar to this, a targetted toggle hold/repel attack.

The mech-suit side of it doesn't really float my boat, but I do like the idea of toggle attacks.

I did like the Maintained/Charged attacks idea in Champions. I never played Power Armor so I dont know how the simultaneous toggle powers felt.

Weaken reduces the mez duration of enemy mezzes (and also Knockback like you say).

So if a boss normally holds you for 12 seconds, his holds will only last 3 seconds while he's weakened, or something along those lines. But I don't think it makes them more susceptible to your holds.

http://www.redtomax.com/data/powers/....Poison.Weaken

I'd say pretty much any support set (Defender, Controller, Corrupter or Mastermind) is valuable to a big team, slightly more so than a self-sufficient character.

The value may change from earlier levels. Kinetics, for example, is great for -Damage and -Regen debuffs (spammed Transfusion) against AVs, even though everyone has their end requirments under control by the time they're 50 (I hope). Its also a source of mez protection if thats needed.

From what I've seen, Virtue isn't short on these archetypes, but more on a team is always welcome.

Could everyone do this?
Or would the redside market support only a relative few doing this?

I craft generic IOs at a reasonable price to keep myself comfy redside. I have days where nothing shifts because someone's badging for their crafting table or something like that, a few days later it recovers. The market redside is very thin.
Never forget that you're using a lot of specialised knowledge in what you describe in your post. If, for example, the tutorial told everyone to sell their big insps for influence, that step would probably fall apart as a relaible source of starting capital.

I think "it worked for me therefore anyone who complains is just lazy" is a fallacious argument.

Say you're hunting for Malta in the Rikti War Zone:

/bind q "targetcustomnext malta"

Fly around tapping the Q key and amaze your teammates with your telescopic vision.
This also works on glowies in open world maps if you know the name - great for those "Find the 4-20 items in the city block map" missions.

Yep. 1 Acc, 5 times Doctored Wounds for my Mind/Psi. And I too skipped Stamina.

I cant deny that the debuffs are nice, just not "king of single target"

Once you get Weaken on the end of level boss, they do as much Damage as if you'd dropped Darkest Night on them.

And Envenom mmakes them fall as quickly as Freezing Rain would.

Darkest Night and Freezing rain affect a whole group rather than a single target.


Three levels till Noxious Gas now for me, it may suddenly all click then...

Nice idea.

I had my 1 and 2 keys macro'd once to do this:

/bind 1 powexec_slot 1$$powexec_auto Hasten
/bind 2 powexec_slot 2$$powexec_auto Accelerate Metabolism

with the idea it would fire them both off as I button mashed in combat. And 2-1-1 or 1-2-2 would turn them both off in Wentworths.

Do not let your soupy boiling anger blind you to the Sands of Mu, Duck San!

No really, I soloed an Ice Controller once, probably the closest thing to this in the game currnetly, and Sands Of Mu vet power was crucial. >shudder!< The word "once" is the keystone of that sentence.

Not that I'm advocating soloing these Buff/Buff types, or forming whole teams of them. Yes, both those situations would kind of stink. Personally, I'd prefer to see a Buff/Melee AT, or a Movement/Melee AT or something cool like that.

I just don't think the Buff/Buff idea is completely worthy of derision - there is a minority of players who like to play support roles.

Buff/buff? I think its an interesting question.
People already make teaming-only support heavy characters, just like they make self-sufficient ones who contribute zero force multiplication to a team, so how far could you push it?

I'm pretty sure it would be overpowered, and I immediately thought of a Kinetics/FF super-fender. I dual-boxed a pair of Defenders for a while, one Kinetics, one Force Fields, and they filled each others weak points incredibly well. They were both Offenders, ie well slotted blasts, and could take down Praetorian AV's together. They turned any team into a group of indestructible cannonballs.

But is that overpowered? Two characters can do it now. If one completely team dependent character could do this, at the cost of having to solo on power pools and brawl, is that a bad thing? It wouldn't stop people from making more balanced or solo-orientated characters.

Oh yeah, and Buff/Melee would rock!

My current favourite is Static Discharge.

I've had damage cones before, it's nothing special in that way, but it looks and sounds absolutely brilliant, in a Victorian Tesla Generator kind of way.

If you're finding that Seeds is missing a lot, you'll want to activate Radiation Infection first.

Its slow to activate (3.1s I think), and I doubt you'll be getting the -Defence on the Seeds of Confusion. Having the non-confused enemies come at you with Radiation Infection on them is not a huge risk, because the -To Hit shiould keep you safe for the timje it takes to fire off Seeds.

So RI first, Seeds second. Seeds will hit much more reliably then.

Against Tsoo, this may miss confusing the Sorcerors though, since they tend to teleport first when aggro'd. Hmmm...

I disagree that Tough is wasted on Dark Armour (or Fire or Elec Armour)

It effectively costs one power - you can usually replace your Tier 2 attack with Kick or Boxing without a huge damage loss.

It halves the amount of incoming smashing/lethal damage - instead of taking 1/2 you take 1/4. This is the most common form of damage in game and also very common for big chunky melee hits.

I'd agree that building up Defence is not a great plan, since you have little to start with, but Tough will stack with your native armours really well on any exotic resistance Tank. I usually pick it up in the 30s and really notice the difference. The end cost of running Tough is saved by the lower reliance on Dark Regen.

I've got one in the mid 30s now.

Up until level 31 you feel a bit weak on AoE everything, both control and damage, but then Wormhole and Static Discharge come along at 26 and 28. Once you've got them slotted up its much more workable, and a very visually engaging set.

Static Discharge is my absolute favourite power for both the visuals (lightning arcs to every foe in the cone) and the XxXxX-RAK! noise it makes.

I havent really stretched the build, just played him in duos with my other characters doing +2/x0 PVE, but its certainly competent enough for that.

Open up your Combat Attributes and monitor "Last Hit Chance".
When you're fighting drones this will show you which attacks their defence works against.

Even 360 degrees melee attacks like Spin, Whilrling Hands and Whilrling Mace count as Melee rather than AoE, so melee characters can get pretty stuffed fighting these guys on their own. Use insp combining to create yellows, I guess.

Damage auras count as AoE, as does Burn, which the drones dont run away from

Gravity has a few problems on teams since it lacks a straightforwards quick recharging AoE mez - it gets Wormhole and DImension Shift instead. Its main selling point for Controllers is its high damage output, this is wasted on a Dom.

Mind lacks a pet, which can cause solo-ing issues when Elite Bosses with purple triangles start turning up in the later levels. On the plus side, you get a single target aggro-free Confuse, which is very nice for sneaking up on an EB and building up Domination, as well as building up Confuse that will kick in when their triangles drop.

Neither of these sets are BAD bad though, both are a lot of fun in fact. Just a couple of points to bear in mind.

I havent messed around with customising Earth Control, but wouldn't this make a really good candidate for Molecular Control already in that you're basically creating solids and gasses around your opponents?

Is it possible to make, say, your hold look like crystal and the immobilise look like rock or metal or something else?

Ive got a 50 Earth Controller. I'll have to have a play with this some time.

Either set for Corrupter or Defender will give you enough safety to solo easily.

I'd go Corrupter for a soloer. The extra damage will be very welcome, and both Dark and Rad are quick to mature, so the later power orders on a Corrupter won't matter too much.

My PeaceBringer was a mutant "living light" shapeshifter and compulsive liar who registered with HERO corp as a PeaceBringer, just to see if he could pull it off.
He'd have telephone chats with Sunstorm using his "Kheldian" voice (ie Mr Spock style voice) and then hang up and laugh about it.

I've got plans for a Warshade and a Crab who aren't related to the canon at all - just "non-baryonic matter powers" and a robot with multiple arms. I've never really been that immersed in the CoH lore, to be honest, and prefer to make up my own.

I'd love to be able to customise the Kheldian forms...

Brilliant idea!

You're helping out two major problems here - inflation and sparsity of levelling IOs. I love it.

I played an Earth/Kinetics to 50 and found a lot of synergy between the sets.

Kinetics needs to hit, Earth provides -Def
Earth is low on damage, Kinetics boosts that.
Kinetics needs close up enemies for healing and Transfusion, Quicksand stops them running away (although so do ST holds which every Controller has)
Earth has some very good long recharge powers (eg Volcanic Gasses), Kinetics boost your Recharge through Siphon Speed.

Earth is much nicer to solo if you have Sands of Mu 12 month vet power. Earth Control allows it to hit reliably thanks to all the -Def.

Are you talking blueside?

Most Defenders and Controllers are pretty welcome. If you can dish something out to the team once you arrive, you'll do well.
Kinetics, Sonic, Force Fields and Cold all tend to make the other PUG-ers instantly happy, myself included.

Storm can raise a few eyebrows from knockbakc haters
Trick Arrows doesn't keep a bad PUG alive as easily as some other sets.
Empathy makes you play favourites, and there may be some odd backlash "healzor" hate from some people.

I'd give Sonic Resonance a whirl, its a great team set. It keeps the team safe if they're all Blasters, but also provides a good offence boost when you get on a lower damage team.
Defender or Controller, you take your pick.

Yeah, +Regen and +HP work well together, since your Regen amount is calculated as a fraction of yout total hit points.

Here's the HP for each archetype.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hit_points

You'll still cap out at less than an unmodified Tanker, but could have 60% more HP than my Controller did if you get +33% hit points. (20% from Freedom Phalanx, TF Commander and Portal Jockey accolades, 13% from set bonuses, it probably doable)

I guess the only way to really find out if it works is to try it.