DrMike2000

I always enjoyed keeping everyone buffed on large teams, even with Kinetics.

Its not massivley different from the core gameplay of chasing down AIs and using a damage power on them - I've never really got why one is considered fun and the other isn't.

I find the Empathy buffs annoying because of the ocnstant vigilance required to check if something has recharged. Single target buffbot sets like Kin, FF and Sonic are preferable for me better because you go into buff mode, do everyone (mid combat is the best time because people move less) and then resume blasting when you're done.

I should point out that I took and slotted Tough. That halves your incoming S/L damage, and makes Dark Armour much better.

I usually start at level 27, when its time to refresh your SO's.

Some of the best levelling sets start at level 30 (Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact, Red Fortune, Doctored Wounds), and by then the actual bonuses from the enhancements have settled down enough that waiting a few levels makes little difference.

Its got an undeserved reputation as an End Hog, and some people absolutely hate running low on Endurance.
The lack of KB protection combined with a heal that requires positioning next to enemies can be a pain too, but I rarely died due to a mis-timed heal this way.

Its my only level 50 tank, and I love the set. 80% Psi resist and good End Drain resistance means you step in where many other tankers fear to tread in the 40's.

I've tried building up +Regen bonuses on a Fire/FF Controller once. It didn't help my survivability. Even with Personal Foirce Field up, the extra Regen wasn't noticable.

I also used the Chance to Heal proc from Entropic Chaos and it wasn't much use either. It takes 200 attacks to heal a full health bar, so 50 attacks to equal a small green insp?

Blasters do have more HP than Controllers, so it might work, I'm kind of sceptical though. And I wouldn't want to discourage you from trying out for yourself, you have nothing to lose but your own time in game, which is yours to experiment with. Like with my Controller, I knew PFF and Aid Self was a better choice than +Regen bonuses, but wanted to try something different.

I predict that your "Regen Blaster from Hell" is going to lean really heavily on Drain Psyche, which can get you killed quite easily.

I had to look it up just now, so no, I didn't get it.

Its a pity Dark Melee isn't called Dark Void or Dark Violence. Dark/Dark scrappers would have such a cool acronym then.

Manouvers is good, yeah. Your FFG is outputting enough base Defence to make it worthwhile.

For IO sets, some personal defence bonuses can be nice to add to this. For a team build, I'd go for +Recharge bonuses, to get all those longer recharge powers up as often as possible.

Doctored Wounds in Triage Beacon, Cloud Senses in Seeker Drones and Basilisk's Gaze in Poison Trap is a good start.

Are you planning to solo or team? I found Elec/Elec to be pretty good for a survivable solo Blaster.

Tesla Cage is an awesome hold for a Blaster, the same stats as Freeze Ray. This alone will keep you alive for a lot of the game. Much later you can pick up more survivability from Short Circuit and Power Sink draining your enemies.

Your AoE damage comes early with Ball Lightning and Short Circuit. Single target damage is lacking in your primary, but your melee attacks make up for it.

Elec/EM is kind of similar, but wont drain higher con enemies reliably any more, since Power Boost got nerfed.

Fire/Mental is a very popular build, by the way, because of the massive AoE potential - it combined all the oomph of the Fire Primary with Psychic Scream. Its not going to be great for survivability - you get a single target stun very late on, and Drain Psyche, which won't keep you standing reliably all the time. In my experience, its a constant temptation to try and max out your regen and get yourself killed in the process.

I recently picked up Gangbuster by patrolling the dockside area in the NW of St. Martial, followed by a stint in Port Oakes near the supergroup building.

For Port Oakes I set up a bind:

/bind q "targetcustomnext marcone capo"

This picks up capo gunners and marcones as well as marcone capos - your desired target, but it still helps a lot in spotting the rooftop lurkers.

Heal you? Pah!

I'd have told her I'd met an Amazon chick who expressed her love for me by beating people up in front of me

Seriously, I think you handled that admirably, Doctor. Polite, firm and not making her feel stupid.

In theory, the enhancement system allows us to customise our characters. Two Assault Rifle blasters, for example, could differentiate themselves in line with their radically different concepts.

"The Marksman" prides himself on never missing, and has 3 accuracy enhancements per power, maybe some end redux to match his calm calculated approach.

"Blunderbuss" uses special explosive ammo, and slots damage and recharge, as suits his more gung-ho approach to combat.

In reality, though, I get the idea that most people find an optimal slotting scheme and stick with it. I used to slot 2 Acc, 3 Dam and maybe a Recharge or End redux in all my blasters before I9, now I almost always slot Thunderstrikes.
I build for concept pretty heavily, but have never taken it this far.

Has anyone ever slotted for concept at the expense of efficiency?
In particular, has anyone ever decided to make an innaccurate character and stuck with it, deliberately not slotting accuracy enhancers?

I never tried to talk to her in person, I just checked my contacts list to see if she was there.

That explains that, then. Thanks for clearing this up.

So if I get the Bling badge at level 23, say, and hit level 25, Doc Buzzsaw should pop-up as a contact?

She didn't. That's what lead me to believe its maybe per-badge.

Oh yeah, I agree.

I've got a stack of characters running around with all sorts of bonuses they "shouldn't" have according to their archetype and powersets.

Set bonuses are great, but you really have to work them to compete with the fact that slotting IOs in a six slotted power can give you around 9 SO's worth of enhancement, whether you're chasing set bonuses or not.

Say you're slotting Thunderstrikes (one of my faves):
The +2% recovery per set is nice, as is the +7% global accuracy per set, but these particular bonuses are still overshadowed by the fact your blasts now have 3 damage SOs, 2 Accuarcy, 2 Recharge and 2 End redux equivalent in them.

Frankenslotting (ie using Acc/Dam's and the like) gives more raw power than set bonuses typically, whereas set bonuses allow you to do the freaky stuff, like defence on a Blaster.

If purchasable frankenfodder was introduced, people like me would mass-produce it for influence/infamy, and the raw power of frankenslotting would become quite standard very quickly. At the moment, the devs can stick to their statement that the game is balanced around SO's. This change would tip that over the edge.

The unlockable contacts in the Rogue Isles typically require you to be in a level range and to get a specific badge.

If you get the badge after you've outlevelled the level range, you miss out.
But what happens if you get the badge before the level range?

For example, I got "Bling" on one character in the late teens/early 20's and Doc Buzzsaw never popped up as a contact, suggesting that you need to gain the badge whilst in the level range 25-29 in order to get her.

Paragon Wiki on the Slot Machine contact says:
"If you reach the levels shown with the badge and have not visited the Slot Machine already, it will introduce itself to you from level 30 onwards. " suggesting that getting the badge first and then hitting the level range does unlock this contact.

Does this vary between contacts, or is there a global rule?

I can see the desire for this.

On my team of villains, I started planning ahead and putting in mass bids for "frankenslot fodder" for the mid-20s, things like Focussed Smite and ranged sets trhat no-one seeks out for the set bonuses.

This was back in December/January, and I did feel that I needed to plan to make this work, and that levelling up 10 characters at once helped enormously. Doing this on a single character red-side would have meant I would level past through the 20s before my bids got filled.

I think maybe the market has filled up a bit with frankenfodder now after double XP.

The question is, should this be done? Frankenslotting accounts for a much bigger gain in performance than set bonuses do. Should that bonus become available for mere influence, or should it remain out of immediate reach?

You can slot for -Res in Sonic Blast, kind of. Slot for Recharge over damage and you can get more coverage of your secondary efefcts on multiple targets.

And Kin/Elec will be the best Sapper IMO.

My experimental tank (a FF Defender) almost fulfilled all your criteria.

I could survive pretty much anything (without PFF, I was softcapped to almost everything), and allow the AoE blasters to shoot with impunity due to the 45% Defence and mez protection they were packing thanks to me.

But I couldn't keep the enemy tightly in one place that easily.

If they were melee types and I took the alpha, I'd be fine, they bunch around me, but I couldnt stop CoT mages or Council running off and attacking from range. Repulsion Bomb was the best I had for that - mass knockdown every 15 seconds or so.

Was I tanking?

IO sets are pretty much useless for building up Resistances, so these are the only sources.
(oh yeah, and orange pills. Medium ones are pretty cheap at the market usually)

The devs had to choose between Defence and Resistance as a feasible thing to build up using IOs, because if you could do both you could end up with some very powerful characters.

They chose Defence because its the easier one for enemies to neutralise - Defence bonuses collapse in the face of +To Hit buffs and -Def debuffs, whereas Resistance just keeps on resisting damage, sicne unresistabel Resistance debuffs are pretty much non-existent.

At least, thats my best guess a sto why its this way.

My Ninja/Poison MM is a normal human with some faithful followers and chemistry skills, and I use the Natural origin.

Set an evening aside every now and then as 'Experiment Night'.

Make up characters with the intent of deleting them after 2 hours or level 6 or some other early landmark like that. Pick a powerset, general costume theme and name and go. You're just going to run around Atlas or do a sewer run and thats it. Then delete them, no questions asked.

Face the fact before hand that you will earn no permanent XP on a character, or gain any 'worthwhile progress' like you do when you're levelling a serious character. Remind yourself that this doesn't matter - you cant spend XP down the shops in real life or anything. You will be gaining some experience in the common sense of the word though.

You may fall in love with one of these throwaway creations and decide to take them off death row. If so, thats perfectly OK, and mission accomplished!

I found Aid Self to be brilliant on my Blasters when I started playing many years ago.

Patching myself up between groups meant that I could save my green inspirations for use in combat when I need ed them as panic buttons. This is even easier these days with inspiration combining.

Hoarfrost,in comparison, allows you to use it in mid-combat, but is up so infrequently that it wont substitute for green pills. So in that way, I'd say it sounds less effective than Aid Self.

I'd recommend trying out Ninjas.

The layout of powers is the same (apart from the odd flavour powers at level 18), but the role each type of henchman plays is dependent on set. Imagine your pets are a really bad pick up group, they probably display comparable intelligence after all

Robots gives you 3 lowbie Blasters, 2 FF Defenders and better Blaster maybe? Quite a nice team makeup for PUG-ing.

Ninjas gives you a team of 3 lowbie scrappers, 2 Stalkers and a Dominator, which is not anyones dream team. You can boost their damage with Smoke Flash too. They're going to require a lot of interaction from you to get them into melee at the right times, and to boost the right members.
Ideally, you'll want to balance with a secondary that can make them tougher, like Dark, Pain or FF. Ninja/Poison for example, is a real seat of the pants ride.

Quick update:

I had a sneak preview last night of how life might be in later levels as I went from 28 to 30.
8 person team, fighting level 36/37 Carnies with something on the team buffing my Defence to the softcap. (Crab Spider manouvres perhaps?) We encountered one Illusionist and no Master Illusionists, they appear mostly post-40
We also fought CoT with Earth Thorn Casters using Quicksand and Stalgmites pretty heavily.

I had one vaguely bad moment. A brief stun during a CoT mission.

I'm starting to think this idea is very workable.