EricHough

With a mind/psi dominator you can also leverage confuse to kill robots as they frequently do smashing damage and are vulnerable to it. Between that and levitate it isn't as bad off as a psionic blast/mm blaster vs robots.

Most other psi resistant enemies are not as bad as they tend to be only 20% resistant vs the 50% res that council robots get, although carnival of shadows adds in psi def to complicate things.

If your concept is primarily hero side and you can handle blapping a psi/energy blaster might be a good choice - its not to far a stretch to consider the energy pom-pom's to be TK fists, or something like that and now that you can color the effects to be the same it will look consistant. The only problem is that this combo is going to be pretty much single target focused as psi blast lost one of its AE's to mental manipulation when the sets where designed (the cone). You will be a single target monster though.

I think that a lot of folks don't realize how fast the animations in energy blast really are - while the tier 3 blast is nothing special (2.0 seconds vs DP's 2.57) it is still reasonably fast (only fire, ice and archery have faster tier 3's) while energy blasts AE attacks are extremely fast: energy torrent (cone) has a 1.07s animation and explosive blast has a 1.67 second animation - compared to dual pistols 2.5 seconds for empty clips and 2.4 seconds for bullet rain. So while a DP blaster will be busy emptying his pistols at a group of mobs while they shoot at him/run towards him an energy blaster can open up with energy torrent, queue up explosive blast while it is firing and watch everyone go flying in about half the time it takes the pistol blaster. The energy blaster also gets much more reliable mitigation, the only drawback being it's KB and so many people are stupid about KB (both those who use it badly and those who hate it so much).

Considering the reduced secondary effects that you get from the different ammo types DP needs to have at LEAST as good a DPA as energy blast - as it is, you give up way to much for a small amount of flexibility, at least for a blaster. I think DP is a decent set for defenders and corruptors because they are not as reliant on killing quickly and can leverage the ammo types to match their buff/debuff set.

When archery and TA where in beta for corruptors I tried both an archery/ta and an archery/traps corruptor to see which worked best in order to decide which type of 'natural' corruptor I wanted to play when they went live. I played both characters up to the SO level.

I found archery to be a decent set for corruptors, you get a solid single target attack chain early on and decent, if not great AE (prior to RoA of course). The tier 1 and 2 attacks are lower damage than many other sets but they also have faster recharge, much like fire blast. On a corruptor that is actually a small advantage at low levels as you get more out of scourge - the lower damage attacks have a better chance of scourging without wasting the extra damage on overkill and you can put together a fast attack chain without having to slot recharge. I didn't get up to the sweet spot (Rain of Arrows) but I imagine that would be just as awesome on a corruptor as it is on my blaster.

I found TA to be a bit weak on a solo toon compared to traps and extremely weak in comparison to something like dark miasma. The real problem with TA is the lower values that corruptors get on all the debuffs AND controls combined with the lack of any real ranged mitigation. Mobs like council tear you to pieces before you can kill them and I imagine if I had gotten high enough level to face them I would have had the same problem with rikti. You have plenty of tools to keep mobs at range in TA (glue arrow, entangling arrow and ice arrow) but very little to actually mitigate damage if the mobs can reach you.

The only real non-control damage mitigation powers in TA are poison gas arrow, which has a very low debuff for corruptors (20% damage debuff) and oil slick arrow, which you won't get until L35 and won't be up every spawn (and it's knock down isn't complete mitigation). TA does have some -recharge but not much, especially with corruptor values. Even stacking every bit of -recharge in TA (entangling arrow + glue arrow + ice arrow) you are only going to get -40% recharge - where a single web grenade gives you -50%.

Compared to traps, which has def in FFG, -to hit in seeker drones, - recharge in web grenade and in poison trap (-30% recharge) TA comes off a little short. Compared to a serious debuffing secondary like dark miasma, radiation or cold domination there is no contest. If you group a lot you can probably get by with a TA corruptor or if you don't mind picking your enemies very carefully you could solo but I wouldn't recommend it except for a concept character.

They do that all the time with NPC's though - take the Sea Witch in Lorenz Ansaldo's arc, she has tornado and lightning storm as low as L20, which a defender would not get until L28/L35 respectively.

I have the power on my necro/pain but the problem is I am a bit scatterbrained and keep forgetting to use it, mostly because I play fairly cautiously and rarely lose my pets. However, the couple of times I have used it the pet has seemed fairly solid. Soul extraction is also very useful because it is one of the few mastermind powers that accepts the recharge intensive pet sets. This means that you can use it to slot the pet auro IO's from those sets that give all your pets +5% def and +10% resistance. Stacking those on top of the pet aura IO's from the regular pet damage sets allows you to stack a total of +10% def and +20% resistance on all your pets.

The 4 pet aura IO's are:

Sovereign Right: Resistance bonus (+10% res)
Edict of the Master: Defense bonus (+5% def)
Call to Arms: Defense bonus aura for pets (+5% def)
Expedient Reinforcement: Resist bonus aura for pets (+10% resist)

While the first two can be slotted by any mastermind in the regular pet summons powers the last two can only be slotted in Soul Extraction, Gang war and Tornado (from storm summoning). For resist based pets and a resist based secondary like pain getting an extra 20% resistance is a huge boost, whether or not you actually use soul extraction.

I checked up on my usual sources for the duration of the soul extraction pet (coh.redtomax.com) but it doesn't show the pets duration. However you can see the pet's that are summoned and thier powers. There are 3 possible ghosts, depending upon which tier pet you are using as the summon fodder but they all have 3 attacks: ghastly blast (4s recharge neg blast), life drain (15s recharge blast + heal), necroplasmic grasp (15s recharge neg blast + mag 3 hold). I assume the different tiers of pets give you more health, etc.

My best guess would be that the ghost pet lasts like any other pet - basically until you dismiss it, log, or use the power to summon a new one. The last time I used it was before the pet duration change and I vaguely remember the ghost lasting the entire missions. Worst case, the pet won't zone with you which means you have an emergency 7th pet usable roughly every 5 minutes with sufficient recharge that will last a mission (or until you zone).

Painbringer is going to take a lot (233% recharge total) but World of Pain will only require 166% recharge and you can get 95% of that from slotting, so you will only need about 70% global recharge to get it perma, hasten plus about 20% to 30% in global recharge would probably do that. Also, with that much recharge Anguishing cry will be up a lot more often.

I wouldn't worry to much about putting together a complete attack chain on an MM - if you want life drain for the heal and debuff, take it for that but at best even with all 3 attacks you are going to be doing 1/7th of your total damage (maybe 1/6th on a necro since the lich doesn't do so much) and thats a small contribution considering the number of slots you have to invest to get it. Honestly, from a debuff standpoint the other two attacks are better - as I noted earlier between supress pain (400% regen) and nullify pain you are NOT going to be short on healing and spamming nullify pain (which heals your pets as well as you) is going to be better use of your time than spamming life drain.

One of the reasons I decided to go for recharge on my necro/pain is because the secondary lends itself to that very well (and very cheaply). Doctored wounds sets give you great enhancement values in heals and give you 5% recharge. If you want the attacks, I would suggest slotting them with cloud senses - gives you 6.25% recharge for 4 pieces and will allow you to enhance the to hit debuff in the power, which is going to help a lot to stack with the lich. If you then slot your lich with to hit debuff enhancements (he also takes cloud senses) that will add to your defenses considerably. Then you can get a decent amount of def without having to push towards the softcap. Keep in mind with the kind of regen that suppress pain gives you combined with the resistance in world of pain a reasonable amount of def (20% say) will give you similar defenses to a willpower scrapper.

One key I have found to cheap def slotting is making the most out of the following sets and powers:

Stun sets (in boxing): Razzle Dazzle (2.5% melee and area def), Stupify (3.13% ranged def and 6.25% recharge) for 6 pieces each

Multistrike(pbae damage): 1.88% area (5 pieces) and 1.88% melee (6 pieces)

Blessing of Zephyr(travel powers): 2 pieces for 3.13 ranged def. The third will get you 3.13 area def but BotZ -KB are going for 100-200 million inf right now

Enfeebled Operation(immoblize set - use in epic immobilize): 4.68% melee def for 6 pieces. This is a really cheap option for melee def - probably won't cost you more than a 100k-200k influence total with carefull shopping. I have used this set to good effect on my VEATS redside, where touch of death and obliteration are extremely expensive and hard to get.

Powers: Combat Jumping (1.88% def to all), Weave and Manuevers. As Organica noted you can go with hover and get the same def but with a higher end cost and you have to like hovering all over the place.

Soft-capping shield cheaply generally means having both weave and maneuvers, which is going to push the end usage up a lot. Fortunately, scrappers have the option of going with physical perfection, although if you can manage it a miracle & numina unique is very nice as well.

Other tips for funding builds: Blue side story arcs give very good merits. By picking and choosing my story arcs and not leveling to fast I have found I can pick up enough merits for a miracle or numina unique by L30, sometimes earlier, and enough for a second one by L40. If you group a lot try to get into a positron or synapse TF, although that might result in you out leveling the better story arcs unless you turn off XP.

Another option for funding is to buy an LoTG recipe with merits, craft it and sell it the IO on the market - you can pick up 150-200 million influence this way, possibly more. That can easily fund the purchases of obliteration and touch of death sets, which you could not buy with the same amount of merits.

The regen in suppress pain is nearly 400% when fully slotted (between 380% and 390% with ED) - that is almost twice as much regen as integration, which gives you about 250% when fully slotted, so it does a lot more than you seem to think, as it gives that to you and your pets. Life drain, while probably nice on anything but a /pain MM is completely overpowered by nullify pain which does a slightly higher heal for less end on a faster recharge, get's both you and your pets and doesn't rely on a to hit check.

Currently my necro/pain relies on suppress pain + nullify pain + world of pain to take alpha's and does pretty well. I don't run at hugely inflated difficulty levels (+2x1 or +2x2 depending on my mood) but a lot of that is because the pets are fairly single target focused so I have bumped up my level rather than the mob count. I suppose if you want to try and build a serious farm character you could pick up scorpion shield in mace mastery and slot up for smashing/lethal def but if you want a farming MM you are better off with thugs or bots, not necro.

My current plan is to pick up dark embrace to stack with WoP, oppressive gloom to reduce the alpha from minions and get both WoP and anguishing cry up as often as possible, which means slotting for recharge bonuses. Except for a few sets it is hard to slot for both recharge and defense. Since pain domination doesn't offer any def powers as a base it is going to be even harder to build up enough def unless you take scorpion shield - and to build on that you have to slot for smashing/lethal def, not ranged which is going to be hard without melee attacks to slot kinetic combat or smashing haymaker.

Bane's cloaking device does suppress - its just that not as much of it suppresses. Cloaking device has 7.5% def and half of it suppresses, leaving 3.75% when attacking, which fully slotted with def is slightly over 5%. A night widow's mask presence has the same total def (7.5%) but 5% of it suppresses when you attack, leaving you 2.5% unsuppressed.

Gruumsh is right - I double checked in RedTomax and it looks like CoD is one of the few (possibly the only) stealth power that doesn't have it's def suppress when attacking. It gives a full 3.75 def at all times where stealth (for exemple) gives 1.875 at all times and an extra 1.875 that suppresses when attacking. Looking at other powers it looks like CoD is modeled after shadowfall and steamy mist - they both give full def (3.75) at all times.

I will certainly keep playing both - I tend to switch between my scrappers and brutes depending on my mood. Sometimes I don't like the constant pressure of keeping fury up and like to play a scrapper, other times I like the way fury drives me to keep smashing and smashing and smashing and.. oops, got caught up there . Seriously though, on brutes I find myself getting annoyed when the phone rings, or my cat walks acrossed my keyboard and pulls me away from the game long enough to drop my fury, or those loooong maps (caves, some lab maps, etc) with huge gaps between mob groups where I have lost half my fury by the time I get to the next one.

Its nice sometimes to start a fight with higher damage - also, depending on the team it is sometimes easier to play a scrapper since you don't have to worry about someone else stealing all your aggro and cutting down on fury generation. Also, if energy melee ever gets ported to scrappers I will finally play it again - having your two best atacks actually be net fury losses is a pain on a brute which is why I retired/deleted both my EM brutes. On a scrapper it won't matter as much.

Someone in game suggested deleting the coh.checksum file to force a recheck of all files - so that is one fix. I have just backedup my PIGG directory for the time being so I can manually replace things.

It looks to me like the updater is running some kind of a mini-update/cleanup after you logoff that is erroneously deleting pigg files - I just had the problem re-occur and I noticed that not only was TexWorldSW.pigg missing but so was TexWorldV1 and TexWorldV2. I suspect until they fix whatever they did to the updater it might be to our benefit to back up these files.

Same thing just happened to me - I had the problem, deleted the piggs and it went away, then I logged off for a while. I came back in game and everything was white again - it looks to me like some process that is running after we leave the game is corrupting the files as I did NOT see a file update occur between the time it worked and the last logon.

Trying to fix things again but I am also going to open an in game ticket.

EDIT: Looking at my piggs directory I notice that I no longer have a TexWorldV1.pigg, TexWorldV2.pigg or TexWorldSW.pigg file in my regular CoX directory although my CohTest directory has them. Doing a file check doesn't replace them, which it did before.

EDIT2: So, I deleted one of the other PIGG files, forcing it to recheck them all -it replaced the one I deleted and the 3 I was missing before, clearing up the problem. AT this point it looks like something is deleting one or more of the trouble files (TexWorldV1.pigg, TexWorldV2.pigg and TexWorldSW.pigg) after exiting the game. I backed up those files for the time being in case the problem occurs again, I would suggest other folks do the same. I am going to bug this in game.

Keep in mind that most nukes also do a good portion of their damage up front and can clear out part of a spawn right off the bat, where HoB is a DoT that can have widely varied damage, so you take return fire from EVERYONE you have just aggroed and you can't even be sure you will take any of the spawn out. So its not just the extra 1.17 seconds.

As for jousting, I am glad the tactic works for some folks, I haven't been good at twitch tactics for the last decade or so (man I hate getting old, not that I was realy a good twitch gamer when I was younger) and I don't think the dev's should balance a power around a questionable tactic that takes advantage of the game engine.

Personally, I think a fear or -to hit effect would be the most thematic approach (foes cowering/ducking for cover), far more than giving you def. The argument for getting def is stretching things quite a bit - arguing that you are "twisting around in place and dodging" could actually apply to several attacks in the pistols set - dual wield for instance looks pretty twisty and dodgy to me, as does bullet rain.

RedTomax shows the AE fear as having an accuracy of 1 and the single target version as having an accuracy of 1.4 and none of the effects are listed as being autohit, so yes, it looks like both will need to hit. The single target attack has a recharge time of 6 seconds and the to hit debuff is 20s duration, so it might be able to stack. For single, big targets (like EB's or AV's) I like to just stack spectral terror as much as possible - with the amount of recharge you need to even consider taking on an AV you would probably be able to keep at least two out.

The problem is that you are rooted in the middle of all the mobs for 4 seconds while the damage ticks away - so not only do they have a chance to alpha you, they generally get at least one follow up attack, since the damage is a DoT and not upfront like most nukes. Then, if you where unlucky and enough of the ticks did not go off (since each tick has only a 50% chance of happening) enough mobs around you will be alive that you will take serious follow up damage. For blasters this can be deadly and a defender/corruptor needs to have some serious defenses/debuffs to survive.

It's definitely not a BAD attack, just not good enough to justify a 2 minute timer.

EDIT: FYI - for those who lost track of the replies, this is in reference to Hail of Bullets, DP's nuke.