DrMike2000

I'd recommend Stalkers or Masterminds for being the most distinct from any of the hero ATs in how they play.

I've never agreed with people who delve too deeply into Archetype names, like the people you mention at the top of your post, Stormy.

I see the AT labels as a purely game term. I don't imagine my characters saying "Hello, I'm a Defender" any more than they'd say " I can do 100 points of damage with my Cosmic Burst!"

For example, Defenders and Corrupters are equivalent in what they do, but the literal meanings of their names mean radically different things.

As for Fire Blast, I'd say just proliferate it.
Some sets already work better for some archetypes. e.g. The low damage/high control sets (Earth, Ice, Elec) suit Dominators better than Controllers. The higher damage sets (eg Mind, Gravity) work better on Controllers than Doms, since Doms have no need for Propel or Levitate with their Assault secondaries.

Resistance is very hard to circumvent once its in place.

Defence falls before defence debuffs quite dramatically unless you have Defence Debuff Resistance, and even that won't save you from To Hit bonuses.

A NPC group with To Hit bonuses or def debuffs that will deliver about twice as much damage to a normal character, but 20 times as much to a soft-capped character, so high defence can be targetted in this way.

Resistance debuffs are resisted by resistance, so there's no equivalent. If you design an NPC group to punch through resistance the only ways are unresistable Res debuffs (which Longbow used to have?) or just really high damage. But, really high damage will completely flatten any characters who dont have resistance.

So I'd say thats the side you left out. Resistance is much more reliable than defence.

Gravity and Electric Control can slot the Ragnarok Chance for Knockdown in their AoE immobilises. Since they don't have -KB in the immobilise, this provides a good deal of soft control.

Gravity and Ice Control can both slot three damage procs (Positrons, Trap of the Hunter and Pacing of the Turtle) in their Aoe Immobs. Add 3 Acc/End and its an OK spammable damage AoE. Nothing stellar, but not bad for a low damage AT.

I have a real soft spot for the Stupefy KB proc. It looks awesome in Thunder Kick when you punt your target like a football, but may not be to your liking if you don't like knockback.
The Kinetic Combat knockDOWN proc is much more practical, and can help you reach that nice S/L def bonus in a spammable low tier power.

The shields are pretty much the same - good S/L resists with a side of something else.

Electric wins points for covering Energy, probably the third most common attack type.
Psi wins points for covering Psi damage, which isn't covered by Thermal or Sonic if you use them.

Dark wins for me though because of Oppressive Gloom. Best Defender epic power evah! Especially when there's more than one of you.

If you're softcapped I'd be looking at what else the power pools give you. Soul Drain is pretty sweet too, by the way, another reason to go Dark Mastery.

Congrats on 40 by the way. Go check out the Shadow Shard if you havent already! (Firebase Zulu marker in Peregrine Island)

The beauty of Tactics, when you do need it, is that it confers +Perception to the whole team.

In Arachnos misisons, that alone makes it worth having.
But thats one small faction who don't really appear much in level 50 hero content - I don't think anyone else packs much -Perception in PVE, do they?

Taking Leadership is a great idea. If half the player base do it with the 3 free power slots, then watch out, bad guys!

The boost from Manouvers isn't much. Tankers get less than 3% unslotted. Its not bad as a set
mule or for capping off some defence types, but its not brilliant.

Assault is a passable "always" power on teams, maybe give that the extra slot and run it full time. The damage boost isnt huge, but it will help finish off the odd enemy here and there.

Tactics is a great sometimes power for the +Perception. If a Night Widow smoke grenades your tema, its worth its weight in gold. Much of the time you wont need to run it, but when you do its nice to have. Swarm of Rikti drones? toggle on!

And Vengeance is a fantastic situational power with no slots required. Treat yourself to a LotG +Recharge if you can afford it.

So I'd go Assault/Tactics/Vengeance. Run Assault most of the time and stick the extra slot in there for 2 end redux.

Power pools give you defence vs everything, even Psi.

Weave (slotted) give you 8%
Combat Jumping is 2.5% unslotted, plus 0.5% per slot, so say 3% for slotting the default slot, 4% if you invest slots in it.
Hover does the same, and you can run CJ and Hover together.
Manouvers gives 2.3% unslotted, 3.7% slotted.

So all up you can get up 19.7% defence to absoutely everyhting from Power Pools. (Taking all four precludes Stamina of course, not a good idea until I19!)

More realistically, lets say 11% for Weave and Combat Jumping.

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Your Invulnerability powers give you defence against all types except Psi:

Tough Hide: 8% slotted.
Invincibility: 8% (for one enemy) plus up to 16% extra = 24%.

So in the thick of a crowd you have 32% defence to all types except Psi from these powers.

Add in Weave and CJ and you're at 43% vs everything except Psi, very close to the softcap.

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My advice for upping your defence is to leverage Invincibility. Play at say +0/x4 instead of +2/x1. Lots of weaker enemies will do similar damage, but saturate your Invincibility more easily, and thats your biggest source of defence by far.

I take it you're a full Villain and not just a Vigilante? Just checking.

Do you have Arbiter Rein as a contact? He asks you to check out the statues in the main hall in Grandville and then choose a Patron from them, at which point you get introduced to the right contact.

Higher level character who suffer from endurance issues have a lot of options to solve this problem already.

They have plenty of slots. They can slot for end reduction over recharge, say. Do you want to be able to go all out for brief periods of time, or keep going at a steady slower pace? Choice is yours if your attacks are 6 slotted. Thats just with SOs.

They can get the best of both worlds with IOs. They can also build up global recharge. eg Thunderstrike in a Blast set = 2% Recovery global AND 60% End redux in the power.

Lots of Epic pools have extra end management tools. Everyone can get some endurance help with the right epic, either a Consume clone, or Conserve Power, Physical Perfection or Hibernation. (OK, everyone except khelds...)

The inherent Fitness change is to take the edge of the lower levels when you don't have all these choices, and partly aimed at new players too.

If a high level character is having end issues you already have all these avenues with which to solve the problem. I'd rather have build options than just a blanket raise for everyone.

In terms of character concept, I've had a pacifist Blaster, a Sonic/MM who casually walked around switching opponents' minds off. He did a lot of "damage" in game terms, but his victims woke up with little more than a mild headache afterwards. (Sonic Blasts were coloured pink and emanted from his head, thus looked like Psi blasts)

In terms of game mechanics, and trying to avoid lowering the opposition's health as much as possible, a Controller is definitely the way to go. Ice, Electrical or Earth paired with a buffing secondary such as Kinetics, Empathy or Sonic. (Force Fields is out as a direct damage dealer via Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb)
I'd go Ice/Sonic or Ice/Emp. Two powers that cause damage there, potentially both skippable with all the extra soft control you get.

Of course, you could debate the morality of freezing your victims solid or encasing them in rock, and yet leaving them conscious for as long as possible.

Absorb Pain saw me through to the low 20's on my Empath Controller because of its incredibly low endurance cost: 0.52 end as opposed to 13 end for Heal Other.

Once I'd got my endurance under control, I respecced into Heal Other and never looked back.

Don't bother double Clear Minding everyone. They onl;y need it once, and then only those who dont have their own mez protection.

Out of the box Fortitude will do 2 people. With recharge slotting it will do 4 (slot for 3 recharge, 3 defence ASAP). Get Hasten as well so you can do even more, Hasten will also help out biug time with your last three powers, all of which are on a long recharge.


Empathy has a lot of emotional baggage with a lot of players, and invites more name-calling and wrong opinions than almost any other set. Just ignore them unless your team is dying around you.

I'm loving it.

My Elec/Elec Dominator came up through Praetoria and has hit 30 villain-side recently.

I've found it to be a very fun set. Its easily the best sapper I've played, better than an Elec/Elec Blaster or Kin/Elec Defender, and has plenty of cool soft controls to back that up. Its the first character I've played who inadvertently saps enemies - I notice their end bars are empty without trying to do so.
I've also successfully skipped Stamina and relied purely on Conductive Aura to keep me topped up. All due to change, I know, but it was nice for this issue at least.

Jolting Chains and Static Field have both pleasantly surprised me as to how useful they are - they're both the type of power that are hard to quantify on paper. Synaptic Overload breaks it up - if you start off with that you don't want to drop Static Field, so it has the same feel as Storm or Trick Arrow, where you approach spawns differently as you move through a mission.

Customisable shapeshifting would be very cool.

Tie certain powers to certain costume slots to simulate Beast Boy style animal forms, or the ability to turn into different materials (metal. flame, brick etc) or whatever else you can think of.

This could be structured around a variety of pools you buy into maybe, or mutually exlcusive forms of some kind. This way the code and power balancing for stone form and gorilla could be the same, they're both the big tough brick/tanker form.
eg you choose Tough form, quick form and flying form and customise you look and FX to be gorilla, dog and eagle for an animorph.
Or pick Tough form, Quick form and firey form to be steel, mercury and phosphorus for periodic table-based transformer like Metamorpho.

The first power in each pool is a toggle to keep that form going (and switch to that costume slot), the other powers are unlockable and only work in that form.

It would probably have to break the power tree like Khelds and VEATs do.
This would be a ridiculous amount of work, by the way, before someone points this out

I'd also like to see characters whose powers revolve around unsupressed combat movement. See my sig for a very lengthy dry post on that.


And self-duplication as an MM set.

They're my big three that just can't be done today.

(Widows make great precogs by the way. Nothing like telling everyone how the next 90s will play out to improve their chance to hit and dodge - Mind Link.
Being stuck to claws and psychic powers kind of spoils it.
And Radiation Emission is a good standby as a reality altering set, Ill/Rad especially. And Rad can work as a probability manipulation set due to Radiation Infection.

Just mentioned these two because they're two of my current group)

Self-endurance help tools are:

Radiation: AM at level 4
Cold Dom: Heat Loss at 38
Kinetics: Transference at 35

Radiation does rely on expensive toggles though, so I've never found AM to be that helpful.
So my advice on secondaries is just dont go Sonic or Storm.

For a primary, I might suggest Sonic Blast. You can generally get by without Shout, and just use Scream and Shriek as your basic attack chain. This means two attacks to slot instead of 3, allowing you to slot them up better earlier, for better damage per endurance.

e.g.
Shriek, 1 acc, 3 dam, 2 end redux
Scream, 1 acc, 3 dam, 1 end, 1 rech

This will be much more efficient than 3 attacks all slotted 1 acc 3 dam.

And Howl is a mere 10 end to fire off compared to 15 for a lot of other AoEs.

I started with Blasters, and never regretted that move. They peak early, they're flashy and fun, and by the time you get around to trying a Scrapper alt you'll really appreciate the extra durability.

Scrappers don't really bloom until the early 20s, which can be a long way off for a new player.

I'd assume they won't be sticking rigidly and exclusively to this character until they hit 50. Blasters are a great way to get your feet wet.

Pairing it with Dark Armour is a really good idea. My only level 50 Tanker is DA/EM, I reckon this pairing would work on a Brute too.

Your aura is the inky blackness of space and your fists are, umm,.. the stars?

Well, the stuns from Energy Melee stack really nicely with Oppressive Gloom, and the damage aura in Dark Armour helps supplement your lack of AoE.

Do take Tough, don't take Cloak of Fear.

Kinetics doesn't really need any set bonuses beyond a bit of global accuracy, but you tend to accumulate that anyway.

Recharge is always good - and with Kinetics means that Siphon Speed is up more often to give you even more Recharge.

Positional Defence is also great, not so much on a Controller, but its welcome in ambushes.

So:

Plan A:
Build for recharge. Put Decimation in your single target attacks, Call To Arms in Singularity (and a Resistance aura is nice there too to make it reallly tough), Doctored Wounds in Transfusion, and so on.
Stupefy in Wormhole, but not the KB proc, because that causes trouble.
Basilisks's Gaze in your holds, this will cost a bit, but its 7.5% Recharge for 4 pieces.

Plan B:
Build for Defence. Thunderstrikes in your single target attacks for Ranged Defence, Blood Mandate in Singularity for ranged/AoE, Steadfast Res/Def IO in Increase Density, maybe Razzle Dazzle in Wormhole for Melee/AoE. This idea works well with Hover.

Plan B is cheaper, by the way, but probably less effective

Implementing a change like this is not difficult in terms of how to do it. Like you say, the mechanism is already there in Dual Pistols.

Its difficult in terms of the number of small details that need attention, and the resultant testing that has to accompany it. All of which is man-hours and money on someone's budget sheet.

On top of that, someone senior like Castle has to sit down and decide which powers are exempt. Bonfire is exempt. (I think its specially coded to never do knockdown, after some exploit involving +6 con KB resistant enemies...)
Energy Blast wouldn't be exempt.
What about Handclap and Lightning Clap? Are they balanced around KB? If the become Knockdown is there any combo that can exploit this to an unintended degree (eg SS/Fire Tankers? Probably not, but I'm not going through all combos here...)

Don't forget epics and patron pools. I bet something would slip through and need further attention later.

So it may be easy, but its not cheap. And I don't know if KB is that big a problem in the dev's eyes that it needs this much attention.

Not a bad idea, Geko.

I'd flip it to be a "controlled Knockback" toggle that limits you to KD, rather than new players having to hunt down a button to experience a staple of the superhero genre, but thats just details.

Certain powers (Repel, Tornado & Bonfire definitely, Hand Clap maybe?) would also have to be flaggged as not affected by this new code - they have to do Knockback rather than knockdown to be balanced.
I can foresee bugs slipping through - Blaster Bonfire in the epics being overlooked or something like that. And these often lead to an extra maintenance where me and other Aussies get locked out for an evening.

It does sound like a lot of work though, especially with all those non-knockback sets around. Players can pretty much already choose if they want to avoid knockback on their own powers by not choosing Energy Blast/MA/Kheldians/Storm.

I see quite a few Trick Archers around. I think it does alright from the concept-draw of the set.
A lot of players like Hawkeye or Green Arrow and want to make someone a bit similar. And it appeals to the high fantasy fans as well as superhero fans.

Sonic Resonance has much less cool spokespersons in comics. Klaw? Banshee?

The devil-may-care roguish lady's men of their teams seems to beat the Irish corncob-pipe smoker and noseless one-handed South African villain

Yeah, Sonic.

Its a poor solo-er, but a great (if unremarkable) team set. Almost every team benefits from having a Sonic on board, but they may not notice that you're the one making everything easier.
Its low maintenance, giving you plenty of time to blast away.

I agree with Dragynn.

Freezing Rain makes the -Def in Rad Blast redundant almost all of the time.