DrMike2000

I'm playing a Ninja/Poison MM at the moment. Im up to level 29 and having fun in that kind of mad seat-of-your pants kind of way.

Poison does really puzzle me as a set. I've got all the powers that I'll be taking now, except Noxious Gas, and I still dont see what the set does so well.

The heal is a standard sub-par patch up like Storm's. Fair enough.
The rez and Clear Mind clone are pretty standard.

It has a reputation as a single target debuffer, but to be honest, Weaken and Envenom are really not all that great.

Envenom is pretty much eclipsed by Freezing Rain or Acid Mortar, both of which give comparable -Res and -Def debuffs to a whole group at once, and are still up every fight once slotted. Even Acid Arrow looks a bit better - smaller values but the small AoE lets you debuff multiple targets.

Weaken provides -11.25% To Hit on a single target, same as Darkest Night OR Fearsome Stare, both of which are AoE. Hurricane gets -22.5% to Hit, on multiple targets. I definitley feel unsafe with this set due to low-ish To Hit debuff and poor heals.

OK, Weaken and Envenom do stack with Noxius Gas, but thats on a long recharge.

Now I understand I'm playing one of the squishier primaries here, along with a set that doesnt offer much passive defence. And I havent started to really hit EB-ville by level 29, where the ability to take down single hard targets may shine.

What am I missing? Does the -Special in Weaken really shine later on? Is Noxious Gas that good with its short-lived Mag 1000 hold?

Gravity's a really good solo set.

- Propel is the highest damage Controller attack, and also the best damage-per-endurance, which is in many ways your worst enemy. The long activation time isn't a huge issue if you're on your own and the enemy are held.
- Dimension Shift can be used solo since there's no team to piss off.

Gravity Distortion, the single target hold, should be able to keep 2 enemies busy out of the box, and the third one can be dealt with by Lift and Propel (and Force Bolt). Get slotting Gravity Distortion as soon as possible.

Force Field isn't great solo. You get a panic button and mez protection as the big plusses, and nothing to increase your damage. For a Defender, I recommned adding to your Defence as much as possible, for a Controller less so because the enemies are spending a lot of time not attacking.

Together the two sets make a slow and steady blaster with decent defences and awesome controls.

I took a long time to get into Villains. I really liked the archetypes and the story barcs, but couldn't stand the scenery.

I tend to play classic spandex X-Men style characters, and sometimes forget that CoX caters to all types of fictional heroes.
I've recently created a bunch of parallel-future Victorian steampunk characters, and the Rogue Isles is absolutely perfect for them. Windy cobbled streets littered with rubbish and beggars? Tick! Beating up striking miners with dark satanic mills spewing out smoke in the background makes sense all of a sudden.

Sometimes it just takes a little perspective shift like that to click.

No worries.

Luck of the Gambler...

Your main aim is to max the shields out for Defence, regardless of sets.

If you're using LotGs at level 50 or close, you could get away with just the Def, Def/End and Def/Rech pieces, which also gives you the best set bonus for your build, the +Health.

This won't make a huge difference from just having 3 SO's though, the two sets will give you +2.25% extra HP and +20% Regen. Nice but not game-changing.

The cheaper Thunderstrikes will - they'll have a big impact on you, so if its either-or due to funds, I recommend getting them first.

Out of interest, how many slots do you have for:

- Manouvers
- Mental Blast
- Subdue
- TK Blast
- Will Domination

I'd recommend 4 for Manouvers at least, maybe 6 if you have spare slots. 6-slotting the single target blasts is a definite plus, with priority given to the later ones that hit harder, but cost more End and recharge more slowly.

Don't you find that each alt you make is a challenge in their own right for unlocking powers as you go along?

You get your first 50, and can then play a Kheldian, but there's still a lot of untapped power content in the game.

You want Fulcrum Shift? Go play a Kinetics Defender for 32 levels, or a Controller for 38.

Want to know hat its like to pilot a Tanker once they've got all their defences together? Go play one for the next 100+ hours then. Want to go and own all those Malta and Carnies who gave you Blaster so much trouble? Keep playing that Dark Armour Tank into the 40s!

And so on. Most powersets have some pretty good stuff in the higher tiers. Some even combine in interesting ways. I've played Storm Summoning, but never on a Controller with a mass immobilise with -KB, which makes Tornado into quite a different power.

That's what kept me playing, even if there wasn't an explicit unlockable at the end each time. 3 1/2 years later I'm still not done.

If the developers do introduce new powersets, I'd rather they leave it to us the players to decide when to try them out than force us to play through something else first.


Account wide badges for getting to 50 on certain archetypes could be interesting though. eg "Seasoned Tank" for 1 level 50 tanker, "Master Tank" for 5 level 50 tanks. Could even have these unlock a few cosmetic options, like costume parts perhaps.

Thunderstrike is the greatest set on earth, IMHO.

Two gives you +Recovery, very nice for a toggle heavy build, like FF running multiple Leadership toggles
Three give you +2.5% Energy Def/+1.25% Ranged Def. This stacks with your Dispersion Bubble in keeping you safe, and thus keeping your team safe. If you fall, any mezzes sitting on the other squishies may kick in, and everyone loses 16% defence or more. You are the keystone, so personal safety is not selfish.
Four gives you +Acc. Always welcome
Six gives you +2.5% Ranged def/+1.25% Energy Def. See above.

A full set also gives you +95%+ Damage and +60% Accuracy, End Redux and Recharge.
The global Acc bonuses and +Recovery compound with this awesome innate slotting for each blast to make you very accurate and endurance effiicent.

Now, you may not have your blasts six-slotted by the sounds of it, but even having only two or three slots its worth using this set. The more you put in each blast, the better it gets.

As an alternative, if you have a spare slot in a blast power, stick a Devastation "Chance to Hold" proc in there, 20% chance to hold a minion per hit. Th hold looks like Tesla Cage, very "bubbly". Stick it in your fastes firing attacks as a preference.

Do get Manouvers, and slot it. On a team, it cuts incoming damage on your teammates by half, assuming you're shielding and using Dispersion bubble. It does this by taking everyone to the defence soft-cap of 45%.

Dispersion Bubble and Manouvers need slotting for defence and end redux.
I suggest Red Fortune for this - it has +5% Recharge from the fifth slot, +2.5% ranged Defence from the sixth. Combined with Thunderstrikes, you can easily hit the soft-cap for defence yourself, without making build sacrifices.
Beware of the rule of 5 though, you can only have 5 +2.5% Ranged Defence bonuses, and its easy to gop overboard on them with Thunderstrike and Red Fortune.

The other good set for defence is Luck of the Gambler. The +Regen isn't fantastic on a Defender, the +HP at slot 3 are good, and the +Acc at slot 4 are kind of wasted if you are running Tactics and have a few Thunderstrikes slotted. This set can be good in the ally shields though, if they arent six slotted. Luck of the Gambler +Recharges are an option too. They're expensive, but they'll get your AoE's up more quickly, like Psi tornado and Repulsion Bomb. Recharge is OK like that for an FF-er, but not as crucial as it is for many other primaries.

For Dominate, have a look at Basilisk's Gaze:
More Energy/Negative Defence, mor +Recovery and a big Recharge bonus for 4 slots. Its expensive though, but worth it.

Personal Force Fiedl takes the Karma -KB IO. Very handy for reducing a lot of knockback. Manitaining your positon can be important to keeping others un-mezzed.

If you took Mind over Body, the Steadfast Protection Unique can go in here for +3% Defence all round for you. Very nice to stack with other +Defence set bonuses but a bit pricey.

The name makes me think of reincarnation for some reason - the Seven-Thrice-Born Warrior.

A hero who has to be reincarnated seven thrice times befroe fulfilling their final purpose?
This has been going on since ancient times, possibly Mu-related if you want a CoH tie-in?

Possible ideas to flesh this out:

The hero's spirit reveals itself sometime in young adulthood, with memories of the other incaranations breaking through into the conscious mind. This manifests as a nervous breakdown, possibly with superpowers attached once the memories are integrated.

The hero personality is separate from the host somehow, and speaks in prophecies occasionally, wiht neither really knowing the ultimate goal. What is apparent though, is that this is the 20th incarnation, and must therefore die before the ultimate purpose can be fulfilled.

The hero spirit reincarnates every century, making this the 21st Century version, hence the final reincarnation of the Seven Thrice Born Warrior. The hero spirit in this way is having to face mortality in a way it hadn't before, since it wont get reborn this time. Great for making up background material as you go along.

The Seven Thrice Born Warrior is hunting something through time - he/she's the solution to an enemy of Mu that could move freely through time. The enemy may already have been defeated in the past, but the 21st C incarnation is required to strike a weakening blow before it slinks back to the 6th Century, or whatever.

I think the duration is fine, but I wouldn't mind seeing the Animation time lowered on Clear Mind. The current 3 sedconds makes pre-emptively CM-ing ateam much more onerous than, say, Speed Boosting an entire team, or even applying double shiedls with Cold, Sonic or FF.

Looking at the clone powers the times seem a bit all over the place:

Empathy - Clear Mind: 3.1s
Sonic Resonance - Clarity: 1.5s
Pain Dom - Enforced Morale: 3.1s
Poison -Antidote: 1.5s
Thermal - Thaw: 2.2s

I can't help but wonder if there's some deliberate design and balance to this, or if Empathy just got saddled with a long animation at the start, back before animation times got factored in to power balance.

Good Question.

I'd probably still take Swift if it was available.

If each character could open up a new pool, Leadership and Fighting are the two I'd consider for pretty much anyone.
Some characters have odd situational powers in their sets I'd try out - my latest FF Defender couldn't squeeze Detention Field in once again, I'd defeinitely like that.

Ive shied away from Stone Armour because of the look and the movement penalties.
I tend not to play in 8 person teams, and hardly ever do task forces, so the uber-survivability isn't a big drawcard for me.

Haven't yet played Ice Armour, but I'm kind of intrigued recently. The look is a bit offputting without the right concept.

I've tried Cold Dominatioon a couple of times, and couldn't get into it. I think I'm cold-phobic. Havent done Ice Manipulation either on a Blaster, and no real plans to.

Spines never grabbed me, once again its the looks.

And I've had real trouble with Warshades. I've never got one above 20, which is where the fun really begins, from what I can see.

Learn to juggle.

A Blaster's most effective focussing on one target till they're down, then the next. A Controller does the opposite - mez one target, then switch, mez another and keep each one occupied by refreshing your controls.

For a Mind Controller, its good to know that Confuse lasts much longer than Dominate - once a target is confused leave them alone to contribute damage.
Mesmerise has an insanely long duration, assuming the slept target doesnt get woken up. You can ever use Rest to top your end back up if you need to in front of a freshly slept target.

Use Containment.
If you're solo-ing (and Mind/Rad is good at this from early on), then Levitate is your highest damage attack. Use Dominate or Mesmerise first to double its damage.

Use Confuse on Bosses
Confuse doesn't draw aggro. This and its long duration, mean you can stack it on bosses from level 6 onwards if you sneak up on them.

Watch your endurance
Controllers have very poor damage per endurance. With controls and a self heal, you wont die often, but you will find yourself gasping for breath early on. Accelerate Metabolism will ease this while its up, of course. Your control powers have base accuracy bonuses of 10 to 20% so slot end redux over accuracy for your training enhancements.

They were my top 4 when I made the jump from Blaster to Controller.

Sonic Resonance is a very frustrating set to play solo.

Disruption Field doesn't work without an ally or pet, and Sonic Siphon is much less useful when you're the only one attacking, since it uses End and animation time just like an attack would. So you're far from the king of -Res that you are on teams.

Pain Domination is surprisingly good. When I looked at the set on paper and compared it to Empathy I was gutted, but having played a couple of /Pain characters I'm surprised how good the auto-aura-rocking heal power is. Zero attention/animation time required, everyone including yourself heals all the time.

I'd recommend Traps. You get a really good range of powers and effects and mez protection from Force Field Generator. Combine it with Scoprion Shield from the Mace Epic and you're laughing. I've done Traps/AR and working on Traps/Sonic now, I'd recommend Sonic Blast out of the two.

Because taking 1/10th of the normal amount of damage when you jump into a pack of bad guys is an exhilirating empowering experience? Defence gets more effective the more you have, so that last 5% or so can make a very noticeable difference.

It's also just right on the difficulty scale - you have to plan your build and shop ahead and so on, but it doesn't take purples or PvP IOs or anythiong beyond the means of a casual player to do so, just a bit of patience.

I started doing it as an experiment and got kind of hooked.

I wasn't aware how common it was, and ended up modifying some existing software to allow me to control two characters simultaneously. This programme (Synergy) means that keystrokes are broadcast across the LAN to both computers, so pressing 1 will activate both characters first power in the tray and so on. Binds and power tray organisation can make two characters pretty effective this way.

I started off solo-ing, something I do a lot of due to my time zone, and the fact that I spend all day managing people and often just want to chill out on my own in game after work.
Once I got good, I started joining teams as a sort of Turing test, seeing if I could play well enough that people wouldn't realise I was one person. As dual Empathy Defenders I was usually very welcome on teams and pulled my double weight, no-one complained about being double Fortituded much.
This was pretty stressful, I was usually knackered after a couple of radio missions from the concentration required.
These days I pretty much solo dual-box or join teams as a single character. I've done that little experiment and dont really want to repeat it, like I said, its far from relaxing on two identical Empaths, on other character pairs its a nightmare.

I make groups of characters to solo, around 10 at a time and pair them up in mix and match duos for solo-ing, and keep other characters for teaming with others.

As for being annoyed by dual-boxers, thats your call.
If the second character is (for example) an Empath on follow with Healing Aura on auto, then yeah, I'd feel a bit gypped too. I deliberately deceived teammates by omission - I wouldn't openly declare myself as one person playing two characters on joining a team, so I guess its quite reasonable to be annoyed by that too.

Leaving a team when two people join simultaneously is jumping the gun a bit though, isn't it? There are plenty of duo characters played by two different players, I've done that too.

Malta Sappers.

I'd love a reliable fast single target energy drain with -Recovery.

I've gone for 30-34 random rolls, and would recommend this once you can if you're looking to frankenslot on Villain Side.

In addition to all the frankenfodder, you get a lot of Thunderstrike, Doctored Wounds and Crushing Impacts that sell for a sizeable fraction of a million each.

Plus, I picked up 2 Regenerative Tissue +regens in the same batch of 15 this morning!
I love the random number generator today!

If you think of it as a minor +Regen increase its OK I guess.

It didn't work as an emergency heal though. If I was getting in over my head, a quick Sirens Song at a pack of bad guys never fixed up my health bar in a way that made me feel safer.

Then again, I had Aid Self and eventually Personal Force Field, so any help that the proc did offer was negligible compared to that panic button combo.

Give it a go. You may like it more than I did.

I had it on my Sonic/Mental Blaster, in Siren's Song.

I really didn't notice the difference at all - you still get an occasional little boost less than a small green inspiration, despite it hitting multiple targets.

Taking the Medicine pool makes a lot of sense with Force Fields, and is a popular choice
Aid Self and PFF work really well together.
Aid Other also allows you to patch up teammates as they leak HP very slowly, and your chances of being interrupted are reduced by your high-ish defence.

Oppressive Gloom on its own will stun minions, and will stun bosses when stacked with a Single target stun like Scramble Thoughts. It allows you to walk up to a boss and stun them before they can react - I used to do this with Screech and OG on my FF/Sonic and found it really effective.
I prefer solo and small teams, maybe this tactic works better there than on 8 person groups.

I wouldn't worry about Assault myself. Its a nice bonus, sure, but numerically only ups team damage by 10% or so. If you really want to do this, the Sonic Blast secondary gives you Howl, which will increase team damage by 20% due to the -Res, with more -res to stack on hard targets. I'm not saying Assault is worthless, just putting it into perspective.

BTW - your forum handle rocks, Secret Asian Man!

I've found Oppressive Gloom to be the jewel of all the Defender APP's, especially with a single target stun to stack with it. It requires next to no slotting, and has negligible end cost. The HP drain is barely noticeable.

I'd suggest taking Oppresive Gloom, Scramble Thoughts, Soul Drain and Dark Embrace as your last four picks. Its a more melee-centric style of play maybe, but you're probably tough enough to survive in there with 24% Defence and a mez aura, and PFF if things start to go bad.

I make characters ten at a time and drop them when they get to 50. Along the way I tend to kit them out with low to medium IO sets, from good commons like Thunderstrike/Crushing Impact to low high end gear like Blessing of the Zephyr full sets. I've never had a +Recharge or +Recovery unique, and I've slotted one or two purples for fun (eg Chance for Knockdown in Fire Breath)

I plan ahead, so each one has a vet respec or two sitting around by the time they hit 50.
And yet I've never strip-mined any of them for their IOs to feed the next generation.

I can't be bothered - respeccing a 50 is boring and takes about 5 minutes too long. I'd rather just buy new ones on the market, its part of the anticipation/reward cycling for each character, just like levelling is.

So since that barrier (a 5 minute respec) is enough to turn me off, I think I dont need the easier option of unslotting IOs at any time.