Expeditor

Just a thought for some minor buffs to super reflexes that might make the set more viable for tanks, but would also benefit other ATs.

Evasion, the AoE defence toggle could be given a damage debuff aura - it has already had a taunt aura added for brutes, but this could be extended to scrappers and tanks and given the damage debuff effect, ~14% the same as Ice Armor's Chilling Embrace. This could be explained as being able to better roll with attacks made at close range, reducing their effectiveness.

Another possibility is Practiced Brawler, the click mez protection, could have a +HP effect added - no heal, just raising the maximum HP, by 10% perhaps? This would add being able to slot heal enhancements and sets to increase the bonus and encourage further slotting for recharge to benefit from stacking the effect.

This would add a couple of extra tricks to the currently rather one-dimensional set and give it a more meaningful taunt aura.

Thoughts?

My crab has been a bane in a past life and his second build is still a bane, albeit a very cheaply slotted one (just plain SOs I think). I do enjoy running my crab through 8-man spawns, albeit with bosses downgraded to lieutenants, but I do miss fighting real bosses with him and have been toying with the idea of respeccing as a huntsman with benefits - leading into a fight with shatter but otherwise mostly using the gun attacks, allowing similar aoe capabilities to my crab, although I'll probably need to drop it from 8-man to maybe 4 or so... still playing about with a possible build.

As for a real bane, you're missing poisonous ray, a top-notch short-ranged (40') attack that's pure toxic damage - nice for by-passing typed defence and such.

The single target hold is also quite nice - it has some strong speed and recharge debuffs attached (50%) and -fly.

Another thing you might consider is swapping the patron ranged attack for the group immobilise - as with the hold it has speed and recharge debuffs, albeit only 20%, but it covers a good area (15') and can be tactically useful, such as keeping some mobs in place while you lead their friend around a corner and beat him up on his lonesome.

Finally, a lot of banes sneak venom grenade into their build - it means drawing out the gun, but for decent toxic damage over a huge aoe alongside a good resistance debuff (20%, or 40% for toxic damage, such as from the aforementioned poisonous ray (oh how I wish that was available for crabs!)) a lot of people really don't mind! All the same it would be nice to have a version that fires from the mace, but alas we must make do..

As ever, the problem is finding somewhere to squeeze all these powers in!

Well if you're happy with your current build and powers then you could always grab a few powers earlier for a start - frag grenade at 18 instead of 20, fortification at 24 etcetera, as well as moving pool powers like hasten, super speed and maneuvers earlier.

Pool power assault is then an easy power to fit in - if you're looking at Cardiac for your Incarnate Alpha slot then you should easily be able to get away with just the base slot for endurance reduction, or you could just save it for teams.

Aim with just the base slot for recharge will still be up reasonably often, especially with hasten and all your other global recharge bonuses, and offers a decent damage buff or an emergency to hit bonus.

CT: Offensive, as you note, is very nice for its to-hit debuff resistance more than the accuracy it provides and so works very nicely with just the base slot.

Hover is also nice, and can be run at the same time as combat jumping - between the flight speed bonuses from mental training and swift it's quite quick and offers a little extra defence to boot.

Assuming you picked up assault along with maneuvers then vengeance is also an option for teaming and again is perfectly fine with just the base slot.

Likewise back for Christmas, merrily incarnating up my Crab Spider over on Defiant and got around to doing the same for Ilservian here on Union yesterday. Loving the new tip missions, just a shame there isn't all that many of them yet so seeing a lot of repetition - the few that I've seen are very nicely done though. Along with the event stuff I've even squeezed in a little random badge hunting for old times sake.

Good to see a few familiar names about here anyway, including some of the old 1AT crowd - brings back warm, fuzzy memories!

Happy heroing (and villaining) folks n folkettes.

-Prime-

Hi folks n folkettes, thought I'd subscribe over Christmas for the winter event and getting my crab spider alpha'd up et al and wanted to know what good, active channels there are for strike forces, badge hunting and such? Already on DefiantBadgers and Defiant Events.

Cheers.

I think a blast primary (or assault, like the dominator secondary) with a shield secondary would be workable, although I think part of what makes the VEATs work so well is the team buffs that aren't so expensive or weak that they can't be used solo as well, so perhaps mixing that into the AT would be a good move. The VEATs seem largely balanced around their low HPs and their inherent (a largely ignorable regen and recovery bonus as opposed to something rather more defining like criticals or fury).

I certainly think the VEATs are among the best designed ATs in the game and having an AT that offers that kind of design with a little more variety in sets would be a great addition for both heroes and villains.

Just to chime in with another possible setup:
Crane Kick (Power Thrust)
Crippling Axe Kick
Dragons Tail
Focus Chi (Build Up)
Cobra Strike (Stun)
Mask Presence
Quickness
Placate
Eagles Claw (Total Focus)

This gives you a high knockback (but lower damage than the original) power for getting foes away from you, a good damage immobilise and slow for stopping foes following you, an AoE damage and knockdown (a 100% chance of knockdown rather than the scrapper 75% and up the range to 10' presumably with lower damage to compensate), your regular build up type power, low damage stun, stealth, quickness (it gives something unique over the other secondaries and everyone loves bonus recharge!), placate (getting criticals from stealth is probably a big no-go but very useful for getting a heavy hitter off you), and a high damage and stun all in one.

And again, no new powers or animations - a little testing for balance and it's good to go

Okay so a Huntsman is pretty wussy compared to an Executioner or Night Widow but how about a Huntsman and 2 Wolf Spiders? Well okay, 3 Wolf Spiders. 4 Wolf Spiders? Fine, just gang war it and send 20 of them in

I know a pretty decent Huntsman can be put together using a few Bane powers (although completely avoiding the mace means losing build-up) and not having a Huntsman branch is kind of thematic in that a single Bane or Crab Spider is more powerful than a single Huntsman. So how about giving the Huntsman some backup?

To give a different feel to the existing branches I started thinking about mastermind-esque controllable Wolf Spiders complete with upgrade powers - we can't have too many pets of course because of all the attacks et al but a single set of pets and 2 upgrades should be workable.

Following the same pattern as the Crab and Bane secondaries we have:
1 Summon Wolf Spider (summons 1 Wolf Spider at even level up to level 23, 2 Wolf Spiders at -1 level thereafter)
24 Equip Wolf Spider (1st upgrade)
28 ?
35 Upgrade Wolf Spider (2nd upgrade)

Base powers: Single Shot, Pummel, TT: Maneuvers (+5% defence to all)
A basic ranged and melee attack and a group defence buff at half the power of your own and a smaller radius (~20'-30'?) - with both pets that's an extra 10% defence. Keep in mind this is in place of the likes of Bane Armor and Cloaking Device or Fortitude and Serum, and we're not going to benefit from mastermind's bodyguard mode either.

1st Upgrade: Burst, TT: Assault (+7.5% damage)
A stronger ranged attack and a group damage buff - again, half the strength and a smaller radius than your own so with both you get an extra 15% damage. We're not getting Aim or Buildup so I'd see this and the predictable "TT: Leadership" in the 2nd upgrade as quite justifiable.

2nd Upgrade: TT: Leadership (+5% tohit), Wolf Spider Armor, Mental Training
I couldn't justify giving them an AoE attack as your own attacks are on a par with a Crab Spider's anyway, so alongside the last leadership aura they have the Wolf Spider Armor giving them some basic status effect protection and Mental Training to speed up the availability of their single target attacks and offer a little resistance to slow effects. The Armor could include a health boost as well to up their survivability a little if needed.

That leaves us with a power needed for 28 (or 35 if we have the 2nd upgrade available earlier. We could be cheap and have a Web Cocoon clone except from the gun instead of the mace. I like the idea of a "Tactical Training: Efficiency" aura to add to the collection, offering 'Conserve Power'-esque endurance reduction (~30% compared to the 120% of Conserve Power or 60% of Energize) and a recharge boost (~20%, the same as Mental Training, seems reasonable compared to the 30% of Accelerated Metabolism and 50% of Speed Boost, but even 10% would be useful in a team setting). I'm not sure if there are any technical restrictions as to why those effects only ever seem to be attached to click powers, so it might end up needing to be a click team buff like Mind Link. Team endurance management powers are quite rare, and that little bit rarer red-side with Pain Domination getting a debuff power during its mutation across from the blue-side Empathy, so I thought it would be a nice touch to finish off with.

After that we still need 2 extra powers for the primary to extend it enough to keep in line with the Banes and Crabs. We're pretty well covered for attacks, especially with the pets backing us up so really we'd want something more in the way of controls or debuffs - the Web Cocoon single target hold wouldn't be entirely amiss if we didn't use it in the secondary, and Confront, the single target taunt could be useful for drawing fire from our pets on occasion. A single target counterpart to Venom Grenade with toxic damage and a resistance debuff would be nice for bosses and the like, or perhaps lethal damage with a small toxic DoT ("Corrosive Shot"?). Or to follow the grenade theme maybe an EMP Grenade, offering a low duration team disorient and endurance drain (5 second mag 2 stun and 20% endurance drain on a 30 second recharge to match Wide Area Web Grenade).

Just some day-dreamy fluff as my Wolf>Huntsman>Bane>Crab sits a single nugget short of 50 and how much I enjoyed his gun-toting days.

Have fun folks n folkettes.

Really like the idea - obviously the biggest hurdle is actually the back end stuff to actually create a replica, but it would allow for some real interesting mechanics.

For example the punch has 2/3 damage coming directly from you and 1/3 from a summoned clone with 1 HP. The clone will automatically 'die' a couple of seconds after his attack recharges though so if he isn't defeated he can get another hit in adding another 1/3 to the overall damage of the 'attack'. Similarly the kick would have 50% of the damage from you and 25% each from the 2 clones, with each one able to add another 25% to the overall attack damage if they aren't defeated before they can kick again.

I really like the power names and descriptions, as well as the general theme - it reminds me a little of a bone armour set I put on the old EU board many many moons ago, and with the whole customisation thing it could perhaps even have alternate looks to match the various spines options.

With bone armour I was trying to give the user some flexibility, with a fair amount of regeneration available for long term survivability, with the option of some good resistance at the expense of some of that regeneration (the resistance toggles had a -regen component) for taking alpha strikes and such. It also had a granite-esque power at tier 8 I think that offered good resistance and defence but outright stopped regeneration (your regenerative powers were notionally being used to maintain this dense exo-skeleton). As a tier 9 I thought a blaster-style nuke exploding off bone shards in all directions would set it apart from its peers, although it would deplete your health similar to ye olde style 'moment of glory' as well as completely emptying your endurance.

I always loved the general idea and look of the Force Field set but always felt the execution was lacking, with the absense of any real debuffs sorely hindering it compared to most of its peers - the Cold Domination set appears to be a much improved design for a defence-based set except without the natty force fieldy graphics.

So a few ideas for some tweaks:
Force Bolt gains 10 second 10-20% defence debuff - it has a high inherent accuracy making it handy for hitting high-defence critters like Rikti Drones, with the debuff to make subsequent attacks easier to land.

Detention Field grants the target a 15 foot 20% resistance debuff against his allies (insert spiel about resonance fields or some such reducing resistance of foes in the vicinity) - because of the only-affect-self thing it would probably need to be implemented as a pseudo-pet or something, but it gives the set some means of increasing damage output whilst also making one of the less popular powers more desirable.

Repulsion Field becomes a 25 foot 62.5% movement and recharge debuff - lets face it, these knock back powers have never been terribly popular, and having it in the same set as Force Bubble, which helps stop critters getting into melee in the first place, just made it even less useful. I had a few ideas for outright replacing the power but that's generally not a done thing so instead, in keeping with the general theme of keeping enemies away from you, having it slow the movement of anyone near you isn't too far removed and adding a recharge debuff as well is an added bonus. It also doesn't become redundant with Force Bubble running as foes pushing against the repel in Force Bubble are further slowed by Repulsion Field giving the repel more time to do its thing. Because of this Force Bubble may need a smaller radius however, which may actually be a good thing as the 50' made it easy to accidentally aggro another group.

So there you have it. Adios amigos.

Likewise may well be up for this, depending on when and such. Would probably consider a corrupter, although I'm tempted to make another VEAT just for kicks and grins

[ QUOTE ]
now i wonder how many goku and vegeta clones come up with yellow blasts

[/ QUOTE ]

Ooh, we could yell "kamehameha!" every time we use the power blast snipe. Hell, if we could set build-up to take 20 minutes to animate it'd be damn near perfect!

All in all... sounds pretty damn awesome Fluff, but awesome fluff.

EDIT: And "Going Rouge" would have been my top pick for issue title!

[ QUOTE ]
Not some kind of nod to the Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) book The Regulators is it? Seem to remember that's got a link to a child in it - though memory says younger than 12.

[/ QUOTE ]

I always assumed it was a reference to the Lincoln County Regulators (see Young Guns 1 & 2)

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with - love the two posters for your own arcs

My names are many and I play on Union and Defiant - I have no intention of leaving quite yet (paid up until ~September anyway )

With i15 seemingly being released within a month or 2 of i14 I'd see it more as a big between issues update dressed up as a full issue just for the anniversary - the amount of upset over it just strikes me as a little excessive.

I'd have probably suggested Dark Melee/Willpower - HPT and Fast Healing are both passive and protect against all damage types, dark melee provides tohit debuffs for extra protection alongside quick and simple attacks that will sit nicely alongside any pool attacks you might choose (Air Superiority would complete your attack chain quite nicely all on its lonesome).

Best of luck on your venture anyway

Will be about from 7:30 to 9:30 if we're meeting this evening?

Sounds like a fix to me - only the Corrupter version should Scourge.