EricHough

In no particular order:

plant or mind/poison controller
bots/time manipulation MM
dark blast/time manipulation corruptor
KM/EA scrapper

I might also create a dark blast/ice manipulation blaster - but I keep swearing off blasters and then thinking I want to play them again.

I will probably end up creating more - I have a bad habit of creating half a dozen alts for each new powerset each time proliferation/new powersets come out before I settle on the ones I want to play, but I have names, costumes and themes already prepared for the 4 in the list, so I am ready to go with those.

My impression in the beta was that the first mission you do (up to the shivan monster) is not the entire tutorial - its just the start. After that the tutorial continues with the first contact on each side and the hero/villain group contacts (dr graves for villains and I forget the heroes name - quickshot or something like that?) and really continues to teach you about the game all the way through L15.

So really, what they did was shorten the part of the tutorial that was required to a single, very fast mission so that experienced players could get to L2 fast and then go PL in AE or run the new sewer trial or do whatever floats their boat, including continuing the tutorial with the intro contacts in atlas/mercy.

As for me, personally, I thought breakout was tolerable, if a little boring, because it was short enough to get through quickly. Outbreak on the other hand was a massive pain - you had to run all over the place with no movement powers and for some reason ever since the last issue or so the door mission at the end has featured a bunch of level 2 mobs that are a pain to take on even with all the veteran powers, I can't imagine what it would be like for a new character. So I am quite pleased with the new, extremely short intro mission that leaves you the choice of playing however you want after that.

Synapse added special coding to entropic aura to keep it from detoggling when an EA character was mezzed. The -recharge is supposed to supress when mezzed, but the rest should stay up. I know at least a couple folks in beta tested it against stacking holds and stuns (massed rikti mentalists and massed green ink men in AE) and confirmed that it did not drop, although I don't remember if they where able to test if the -recharge suppressed.

Otherwise you would be correct Seebs - RttC and AOO are example of offensive toggles that drop when held, I have had that happen with my WP and Shield characters when they get caught in sequestration in a BAF.

I bugged the real numbers display issue in beta a couple of days ago - if i21 goes live without a fix I will probably bug it again, but in the feedback thread on the beta forums Synapse confirmed that scrappers as well as brutes have the taunt in entropic aura.

Some links to Synapses posts on EA:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=794
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=806
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=808

Willpower has pretty much the same stun protection as every melee defense set out there, so what you experienced is not unique to WP. All brutes and scrappers start out at 5.58 points of protection from most mezzes at L10 (the earliest most sets get thier mez protection) and end up with 10.38 points at L50. All the sets have the same level of protection the only real differences are what level you get your protection and which mez effects you are protected against. Tanks are on a different scale that starts higher and ends higher, but they work the same way. (KB protection is an odd exception to this, but thats a different topic).

All mez effects stack since what they actually do is subtract their magnitude from your current mez level - and once you are at a certain value (-1 or below I believe) then you are held, stunned, slept, confused etc. You start at 0 on everything and mez protection toggles just add to your status effect level and makes it harder to mezz you, but not impossible. Since green inkmen do stun in all their attacks, if you are hit by a lot of them its one of the few ways to get stunned through your mezz protection toggle. I have had large groups if high level longbow stun me as well as they have a lot of stunning attacks and a lot of malta can also be dangerous - while they don't have as many stun attacks as LB or Ink men they have some very long lasting ones (like - 1 minute) so they can stck up over multiple groups of malta.

Oddly enough my fire/traps corruptor doesn't use trip mine as often as my archery/devices blaster - but he groups a lot more and in most groups you just don't have the time.

When I am soloing my preffered use on the blaster is to stealth in range of mobs, drop it at my feet along with a caltrop patch and then open up with RoA and my other AoE attacks. The result is that any mobs on killed in my initial attacks run toward me, hit the caltrops and slow down, then hit the trip mine and get blowed up.

That strategy doesn't work as well with my traps corruptor if only because I am at the S/L softcap and I am a lot more offensive on him - he jumps into the middle of the mobs, drops acid mortar + PGT and then unleashes RoF, fireball and firebreath (bouncing back out to aim that). I don't really have time for trip mine - usually I only use it when I am facing a couple of bosses or an EB and then I do a mine and pull strategy - dropping a couple of trip mines, PGT and caltrops then pull with fire blast.

On a traps/sonic defender you will probably get a lot more use out of trip mine than my fire/traps corruptor did if only because you don't have as much Aoe on sonic blast. Plus, you have the sleep in sonic which will give you more time to drop traps - just make sure you do them in the right order so you don't wake things up to soon. Stealth up to siren's song's range, sleep things, go in and plant PGT, Acid Mortar then trip mine and watch the fun. Alternatively you can do a trap and pull like my blaster did - stealth into sonic cone range, drop trip mine + acid and the open up.

Been seeing this problem all week now but has been tolerable until this morning when I was constantly rubberbanding during a renault SF, even died once due to command lag (hit my heal and was dead before it went off).

I didn't catch any screenshots with netgraph then, will try later today if I am still seeing the problem. I am in western washington state on Comcast cable just as an FYI. My ping, download and upload speed are all insanely good as far as speedtest is concerned (63 ms ping, 3.24 Mbps download, 1.27 Mbps upload when testing between my machine and a server in fort worth, texas).

EDIT: Here is a screencapture of the netgraph 2 output I was getting just after zoning into Oro. I was not in a group or a TF, just standing around:

If you want good AoE damage on a mind/fire I would suggest going with fire mastery for fireball + rain of fire. Fireball will give you a fast firing, good damage targetted AoE attack that is a lot easier to use than fire breath and RoF will give you a huge area damage power that will be great to drop on a mob you have locked down with total domination or mass confusion. Both powers will be boosted by embrace of fire as they do fire damage.

While sleet + ice storm will probably work better for boosting group damage, due to the debuff in sleet boosting everyone's damage, the combo of embrace of fire + fireball + RoF will likely give you more personal damage.

The biggest problem with a list like this, whether done by an aggregate vote or done by an individual, is it is almost always going to be weighted towards actors with whom the list author has experience and that means weighted towards those that have done more recent work. For example, I would always put Cary Grant in a top 100 and probably in a top 20, just like Acemace did - but I don't see him on the Times list. Alternately, while I do like Joe Pesci, he does NOT belong at #6. Mind you, they did get some very old school actors - Spencer Tracy for example.

One amusing thing I noticed - the IMDB list has a weird bias towards gangster movies.

So far I have a L44 claws/sr, L37 claws/electric and L27 claws/fire brute. I have taken follow up on the first two and will eventually take it on the claws/fire brute. Yes, the damage bonus is smaller than a scrappers and can get lost in a brutes fury, but its still 30% and in even a moderate recharge build its not hard to double stack (thats 60% - nearly as much as rage but without the crash).

However, the real benefit is the 10% to hit buff - that tends to be really nice when facing anything with to hit debuffs (or def). There are not a lot of other way to get to hit buffs without taking high end cost powers that don't give you nearly as much in return. You can take tactics at 0.39 end/sec for 7% to hit or focused accuracy for a whole 5% to hit at a whopping 0.78 end/sec and neither of those can be stacked with itself like follow up.

Its not as must have as it is on a scrapper but neither is it totally worthless. I just wait longer on it until I have enough recharge in my build so that it fits into the attack chain easily, usually picking it up around L30-35 depending on what else I need to take there.

I agree with Bill that not playing EA now because you are waiting for the buffs is a bad reason - however, there are a number of good reasons to put off starting new characters for a bit:

1) You will be able to start any character but EAT's on any side you want - so you don't have to play a brute to L20 and then spend 4 days running rogue/hero tips to get to blueside if thats what you want, or start in preatoria and work your way to 20.
2) The new sewer trial (Death from Below) gives some sweet bonuses that make the low level experience much more pleasant - you can get a bonus to hit, damage, end recovery and def (which is not huge - but for a def based character like EA, helps a lot). The bonuses don't last past L20/21, so are no good if you are already leveled up.
3) Whatever your level of Vet rewards now, you will be at least slightly ahead with freedom, if not a lot. I find most of the vet rewards pay off in the lower levels, so this can be a big thing or nothing at all.

The new low level experience is a lot smoother with a lot better choices, so if you are in no hurry to start a new character, waiting might not hurt. If you are looking for a new alt right now though, by all means roll an EA brute - it will be a fun ride that will get even better with i21.

I have two accounts and a kin defender on each account I used to use for semi-PL'ing lower level characters: following them in missions, SB'ing and healing them, etc. I preffered this to outright PL'ing in AE because I still played them, just didn't have to put up with low end prior to stamina at L20 (obviously, this was prior to the inherent stamina change).

I found I had the easiest time with melee types that had enough taunt to keep mobs off the defender or controllers that could lock down things and keep them from attacking either. Blasters and other defender types where not as easy to duo with the kin because they had no way to keep focus and its hard to play 2 very active toons while dual boxing.

So, if you go with a melee type make sure you can take an AoE taunt effect very early on. Brutes and tanks tend to get taunt auras very early, although shield and willpower scrappers also get one by L16. Shield scrappers are just about as good a taunter as brutes/tanks, just more passive than active.

Any controller that got a good AoE control fairly early would work (by good I mean something that prevents return fire - not just an AoE immoblize). Plant, fire, and earth are all good in this as they get a complete control by L8 for plant, L12 for the others. You can pick up a nice debuff set to go with it as well.

I would recommend that you play with the kin on the secondary account and use the other character in the duo as the primary. Its easy to set up binds/hotkeys for speed boost, siphon speed and the heal and use the kin as mostly a buff bot who may throw out an occasional attack - let the brute/scrapper maintain aggro and do the primary damage.

EDIT: While deacon has a point - a Kin is a little more click heavy than something like an empath, it isn't THAT much heavier. All its powers that require targets can be made to work by targetting through the other player and as a buff bot you only really need to fire off SB every now and then, siphon power when you are in the mood and the heal when you need it (and fulcrum shift later on). An empathy will be at least as busy healing. Mind you, fortitude is an awesome buff and the recovery boosting abilities of speed boost aren't as important these days with inherent stamina, but its not really all that hard.

Magma Imp, my earth/thermal controller went from 39-45, mostly due to Zaloopa's Dr Q.

Mielikki Greencloak, my plant/empathy controller went from 26ish to 31

Midnight Astral, my warshade, went from 26 to 32

Various other lowbies picked up some xp here and there, but those 3 where my main focus.

Was on mission 2 of a posi run - mind you, between the base bugs, the power recharge bug and having a cyst pop-up in a group of L15's, quitting wasn't that big a deal - but 15 minutes warning is pretty sad.

I don't really see any more synergy between gravity control and time manipulation than there would be between any control set and time manipulation. The holds in TM will stack with the holds in any control set, so that doesn't make grav/time anymore special than anything/time. The movement debuff in gravities powers could be considered synergistic - but time manipulation has SO much movement debuff that using it alone you are likely to hit the movement speed debuff cap.

I actually see more effective synergy between ice control and time manipulation, as they both possess recharge debuffs and stacking them up IS a good thing, far more than movement slows. Even earth control's quicksand is likely to better combine with time manipulation than gravity - stacking it with the slow field in TM will make sure nobody moves at all or at least give you the ability to drop slows on two groups at once. Volcanic gasses will also go well with time manipulations slow field, since it has a pulsing chance to hold that would stack nicely with VG and both have a fairly long duration.

Now, thematically speaking the two seem to be a natural combo - but mechanically I don't really see any advantage.

I am willing to give it a try although not sure what I can bring - my 48 fire/mental blaster and my 43 km/ninjitsu stalker are the only toons currently in the right level range that can still benefit from the XP. However, my stone/thermal controller is 38 and might hit 40 by then - if so, will bring her.

So tentatively sign me up.