EricHough

I just want tar patch in SOME secondary for controllers. I could live with less control in a controller version of dark miasma although except for fluffy I don't see it having that much more control than, say, TA. 1 cone fear, 1 single target hold, 1 AE movement slow - I don't even see why folks think it would be that big a deal to stack fearsome stare and terrify or spectral terror, its not like stacked fears are really going to be all that more effective, damage will still break them and so far I haven't hit much that spectral terror won't fear on its own.

It isn't as much the power colors as it is the effects of the powers themselves - I love the ability to drag a couple of groups onto tar patch and rain AE's down on them with my fire/dark corruptor - I could see doing something similar with a mind/dark controller, just not as much AE until you get to APP's.

Actually, I don't see anything in Futurias last post that makes any claims about what difficulty setting he could or couldn't solo, just that he has enough trouble against malta that they are not worth soloing.

All of that aside - yes, barring EB's/AV's/GM's pretty much anything else in this game is soloable - but the question is HOW hard should you have to work to solo something and how much fun you find soloing with a given AT. If I have to burn through half a tray of inspirations every single mission just to solo certain mobs even at heroic I am at least going to avoid those mobs - if I have to do that with ENOUGH mob types that I will probably just avoid that AT/Powerset combination totally. Likewise - even if I can solo without to much pain at heroic I am only willing to STAY at that level for a certain amount of the game before I find that myself becoming bored with my advancement speed, as soloing at heroic starts to really bog down once you are in the 30's and only gets worse at L40.

Currently I find the soloability of defenders and to a certain extent corruptors to be sad at best, totally sucky at worst. The fact that other folks can stand soloing them is nice - but at this point I would accept anything that would improve this as I DO have some character concept that best fit a defender or corruptor but so far can't stand playing them. ONE thing that would improve things would be way to get at least a minimal amount of status protection.

I honestly don't see how adding a couple points of sleep or stun protection to a tier 3 or 4 pool power or to an IO would impact the value of defenders or corruptors in a group but it would give those of us who don't like to group a way to handle mobs that sleep, stun or hold without having to carry around trays full of nothing but break free's. Nor would doing something like this impinge on the position of scrappers, brutes or MM's as the kings of soloing, since 2-3 points of status protection is NOTHING compared to what melee AT's get and is even pretty weak compared to defiance, which allows blasters to still attack under any amount of control.

Starting at L27 I frankenslot with L30+ pet damage IO's. I put in 3 Acc/Dam from whatever sets I can get cheaply and 1 damage, either a generic or one from a pet damage set if I want to get some set bonuses - not that any of them are really worth getting. That gives me slightly over 60% accuracy and ED capped damage and only takes 4 slots, leaving 2 for things like pet aura IO's, proc's, etc - what you put in the remaining two slots depends on the pet. For example on my thugs/traps I have a def IO and an achilles heel -res proc on my enforcers.

As for end reduction so far I have slotted it on my necro/pain MM's lich as I noticed he burned through a lot of end after the second attack upgrade and I am thinking about slotting some on my thugs/traps bruiser. When you get high enough level (40+) you can substitute higher level acc/dam/end reduction IO's for 1 or 2 of the Acc/Dam IO's I suggested above and still get about 60% Acc, capped damage and a little end reduction.

Well - since I pretty much never group that argument is lost to me anyway - in response I say why should I never be able to play certain AT's because I feel they cannot solo without a lot of pain and agony on my part.

I am not suggesting much and as I pointed out the game already provides this for hold protection in acrobatics- adding it in to OTHER pool powers or as geko suggested as the 6th IO set bonus would not really be overpowering and would require that, like me, you REALLY want to solo you can work for the ability to do so. I don't want 1 power that will provide everything - I am willing to work for my defenses but right now there are NO options for sleep or stuns. Just enough that a single 1 second sleep won't drop all your toggles - like the ones done by a lot of the crey mobs you face in the 30'. I almost quit playing my archery/devices blaster because every single fight I dropped targetting drone and cloaking device - and CD has a 20 second recharge. The change to defensive toggles resurrected that character but I still can't play defenders or corruptors who rely primarily on offensive toggles.

I played both an A/TA and an A/Traps on test - got the TA up to 20 and the traps up to 17. Initially I liked the TA best due to the lack of redraw and the fact that even with the MM end costs on TA it was still lower than /traps but by mid teens the advantage of having acid mortar already and the def from FFG clearly put traps ahead, at least for someone who primarily solo's as I do.

Another stike against TA is that it went live with the Mastermind end costs instead of the controller end costs.

Is there any way to turn OFF this ability for those of us who don't have that vet award yet? Currently the display of movement power pools is extremely screwy because of this change - the second and third powers in the pool have swapped position (so for fly the powers are listed in the order hover, fly, air superiority, group fly) and could be very confusing for those who are NOT aware of the vet award that makes this possible.

This is a problem with many of the assault sets - fire, ice, thorns and now earth all start with a single target blast, single target melee, AE (cone or PBAE) and a second single target blast - which means to get a decent attack chain that doesn't have you running in and out of combat you have to rely on the primary and slot up a single target immob (or go mind so you can take mesmerize and levitate), dip into a pool for another melee power or waste a lot of end using the AE power in a single target attack chain.

This is one of my pet peeves with the dominator AT and the reason electric and energy are my favorite secondaries - or mind/anything since mesmerize and levitate are basically ranged attacks with a sleep and knockup respectively.

I found that archery worked fine up until I hit my first master illusionist - the phantoms, phantom decoys, ranged damage and debuffs where ugly to behold. Prior to that you are correct - lethal damage at range is very effective against carnies. My blaster was an archery/devices which made range even more effective as I could keep most things at bay with caltrops.

I think the OP has a good picture of things - if you want a scrapper, anything/SR, anything/dark or anything/electric will do just fine against carnies with lethal damage being the best bet. The SR will be more survivable overall once you hit the softcap but the /electric might be more fun. If you don't want a scrapper any kind of illusion controller will probably work well although illusion/rad is one of the best combo's as the /rad debuffs will balance any psionic resistance or def that they have. Other than that - lethal damage and the ability to keep them at range is your best bet although as I noted that can be hard with master illusionists.

You can always copy your character to the test server before running the respec, then try it out on test to make sure it works right. This will also give you the option to run a coulpe of test mission with the new build. The character copy tool is very easy to access as its now in the forum list right after the training room forums.

I am pretty sure that the regerative tissue unique has no effect on the power in which it is slotted - however the enhancments IN that power increase the value of the unique - so if you put in in health and then add 3 more slots to health so you can cap your healing enhancment the RT unique will add 48% regen or so instead of 25%. (exact value will depend on how close you are to the ED cap).

So the only two factors that should be considered when deciding whether to slot it in FH or health are:

1) Which one are you going to slot up first so that you can get the best benefits out of both the power and the RT unique as soon as possible.
2) If you plan to do any exemparing you will want to slot it in whichever one you took first as the RT unique is a proc and will provide benefits as long as you have access to the power in which you slotted it.

Dsorrow is correct in that when I say defensive debuffs I mean debuffs that reduce the ability of the enemy to damage you - specifically to hit debuffs and damage debuffs, although I consider slows defensive as well. Sorry for the confusion, its a case of game terms conflicting with the english language.

I certainly agree that TA has plenty of DEF debuffs - I play 3 TA controllers and love it for that and the resistance debuffs. However my controllers have plenty of damage mitigation (probably a better term than defensive debuffs) in controls and so I have never taken PGA. I still have yet to see if the damage debuff in PGA will cut down on the ranged damage I take enough to make a difference but I was just looking over the numbers and my original question occured to me - why was PGA reduced so much when it went to controllers.

Actually, I see no problem with moving the status protection power to L10 - thats when most scrapper sets get their status protection anyway: SR, Willpower, dark armor, shield defense and even the new electric armor set all get status protection at L10. In fact, you could argue that regen and invulnerability are now the ones that 'break' the rules. (we won't even talk about fiery aura). I would accept that the heal is a bit early, although both regen and fiery aura set a precedence for an early heal, however L16 would be appropriate for the heal - just put the stealth power at 4 and whatever replaces caltrops at 20.

The 5th ER gives you 10% bonus to regen. I am currently using 5 ER + Call to Arms A/D/R in my illusion/rad. I went with this mostly because I got the CtA a/d/r fairly cheaply a long while ago but the current price of L30 CtA E/D/R is about 15-20 million on the market and I tend to be cheap (relatively speaking). The difference in recharge on my PA between this and Nintova's slotting is about 3 seconds when hasten+AM is up. I am also using a spread of L40 - 47 IO's as my ill/rad is still only L44.

Except that not everything HAS a weakness, for example willpower really has no single weakness (yes, folks like to say it is weak to a 'beta' strike but all that really means is if you shove more damage at it than it's regen can overcome you will eventually wear it out - pretty much every defensive set but soft-capped def sets have this weakness). Some scrapper/brute/tank defensive sets do have holes in them. Those holes are NOT there because they can be filled in by an IO as the dev's have stated many times that they don't balance around IO's. The holes generally exist because the dev's think something else in the set balances them. Fiery aura has a KB weakness (and to a limited extend an immobilize weakness) because the dev's felt that this balances the sets extra damage powers. Stone armor has a psionic hole I suppose because it is so strong everywhere else. Regen is weak to burst damage but incredibly strong to sustained damage - etc.

Even many of the classic weak points have been recognized by the dev's to be a mistake and filled in with updates. MoG was changed to be an excellent alpha absorber, electric armor is getting a regen/heal power in i16, and so on.

So refusing to use IO's to fill in a specific hole is NOT unreasonable. It may not be the best way to optimize character performance, but plenty of the holes have non-IO solutions (such as acrobatics).

Based on Guy's comments it sounds like instead of filling in a sets holes with IO's he either slogs on with the hole, living with the limitations of it or fills it in with pool powers such as acrobatics. Which may make him something of a masochist but is it really worth a lot of derision?

Ultimately, this entire argument came about because Guy made an offhand comment about not relying on IO's to fill holes in sets and another poster jumped to the assumption that he meant that he NEVER uses IO's. Ignoring the fact that this is still a perfectly acceptable way to play the game (not using IO's) I have to agree with Guy that it is silly to jump from "I don't rely on IO's to fill in holes" to "I never use IO's". Is it really that important to 'zing' someone that you have to attack a poster for an offhand comment that really isn't even about the thread topic?

I also think that if many people feel a set is unplayable without IO's they should be pushing the dev's to improve the set. Deriding someone for not being willing to add unique, expensive IO's to dark armor either means you are being an a** or you don't think the set is playable with SO's - in which case you need to take that to the dev's.

Make sure you are slotting your attacks with accuracy and end reduction first, then some recharge if you can spare it. Prior to L22 and SO's a brute really doesn't need to slot damage as fury will suppply all the damage boost you need. My standard slotting is 2 accuracy 1 end red DO in every attack, then in the longer recharge, higher end attacks I like to get a second end reduction and a recharge DO. Make sure you have at least one accuracy in brawl as well.

Put off slotting up your defenses until just before L22 - you get so little effect from the def and resistance DO's that it is far better off focusing on your attacks first. One end reduction DO in each toggle is enough early on.

With that slotting you will find that your end use goes way down. At this point you want to build fury with your fastest attacks + brawl and hold of on your big attacks until you have at least 50% fury (or close to it).