Fleeting Whisper

Not only are you wrong about radii comparisons between Corruptors and Defenders, there is **NO** attribute modifier for radius. Radius is simply set for the power. Unlike something such as damage or defense debuff, it's not a scalar multiplied by a modifier.

One thing I didn't see mentioned is that, unlike the other AoE heals available to Masterminds, Twilight Grasp is a pseudopet. Defenders, Corruptors, Dark Servant, and Yanamari summon Pets.Twilight. Masterminds summon Pets.MMTwilight. In fact, the closest equivalent to Twilight Grasp that's available to MMs is Triage Beacon (AoE +Regen; powered by a pseudopet; Masterminds, Corruptors, and Defenders all summon Pets.Traps.Triage_Beacon).

Honestly, I don't think Dark Miasma players should be so concerned about TG until and unless Masterminds are given Kinetics, and Transfusion gets to keep its radius. (And this is speaking as a player whose first 50, main villain, and main badger is a Thugs/Dark.) I'm all for fixing problems with MMs, especially my beloved Dark Miasma -- IIRC I'm the one who pointed out to Castle that the MM version of Shadow Fall (and the MM version alone) debuffs the caster's JumpSpeed (but not anyone else affected by it); it no longer does. But TG's radius isn't something to fight for, unless Transfusion isn't given the same treatment.

Boxers are clearly visible when worn under tights, and I don't see any on him. Therefore: briefs.

I agree. We shouldn't be kissing ourselves, we should be kissing others.

I see you never got into Blappers (a Blaster's melee damage outstrips their ranged damage, and their melee comes from their secondary), and relied on Hover for protection (Blasters get a variety of powers that help them survive from their secondary). While perfectly valid for your own playstyle, those secondaries do server a purpose, and many do it very well.

In my opinion, with both Kheldian archetypes, you have to make choices about what you want from the character. There are simply too many options to have everything. Human-only helps a lot, especially with slots, since you don't have to add slots to the form power, or the powers granted by that form. But Human-only also limits your capabilities. If you take one or both forms, you have to decide which Human powers you want to skip over or ignore slots in, otherwise you'll spread yourself too thin.

You can't treat Dominators like Controllers. With Controllers, you can help protect yourself and your team with your buff/debuff secondary, and deal damage and control with your primary -- before pets and epics, your single-target mezzes pretty much are your damage. With a Dominator, controls are more like setup for your attacks. Your control keeps you from getting squished while you're in melee. Et cetera. For example, I've got a Mind/Psi Dom at level 24 and one of the things I frequently do to open combat is Mass Hypnosis to put the spawn to sleep, jump in the middle for Drain Psyche (big +Regen and +Recovery), and then start attacking. Specifically irritating enemies can be confused, and I can Hold (Dominate) and Sleep (Mesmerize) two enemies while I kill a third. My controls are my armor, in other words.

Yes, for someone who doesn't like and is inexperienced with Masterminds, Ninjas was a bad choice. So was Poison. Melee pets are harder to control well and keep alive (and Ninjas in particular run around everywhere with extra RunSpeed), and a single-target set like Poison just makes the job harder. For a better experience, you should have gone with a more ranged group of pets (Robotics, Thugs, Mercenaries, or Demon Summoning once it comes out), and a secondary with more area support (um... basically everything except Poison, though in my opinion Force Field is a bit boring; Traps would also set an entirely different pace on the gameplay from the other sets).

With ranged pets, you can often ignore trying to control them at all. Just turn on Bodyguard mode and jump into the spawn yourself. You'll get attacked, absorb it via BG, and your pets will unleash hell. I love my Thugs/Dark, too -- I left my computer during a Malta mission to go eat dinner, and I came back to find that I had defeated 3 ambushes without a single pet dying.

With regard to a petless Mastermind: I would generally advise against it. Yes, it can be done, and yes some team leaders will let you join as a petless Mastermind, but in general petless Mastermind gets weak attacks (weaker than Defenders, and you don't even get a full set of 9), moderate buff/debuffs (similar to Controllers and Corruptors, though if you play Dark Miasma, Twilight Grasp's radius is also nerfed), and no inherent power (since the MM inherent entirely depends on henchmen). HOWEVER. Since seeing Demon Summoning I wouldn't necessarily take the same stance. In fact, I created a DS/Pain MM on Test specifically because Pain has a number of low-level powers that I'm not especially interested in, so that I could skip them in favor of the whip attacks -- which are actually useful in my opinion, unlike the other MM attacks.

In those large team situations, have you tried ignoring your AS and treating your Stalker like a Scrapper? Scrapper and Stalker are very similar -- there are a few differences like their maximum HP, but it's easy to scrap on a Stalker.

As for Smoke Flash: It's like Placate from your primary, except that it's AoE and it doesn't put you back into Hidden status. Each enemy you affect will ignore you until either the effect wears off, or you attack them. Unfortunately, it doesn't Hide you, meaning you can't get another AS or automatic critical. Remember the difference between the effect "placate" (enemy ignores you), and the power [Placate] (which applies "placate" to a single target and puts you back in Hide).

I'm surprised you liked Bane Spider/Night Widow but had trouble with Stalker, and that you found the Widow line more survivable than the Soldier line. The survivability difference between the two is basically 5% (+enhancement) defense overall in favor of Soldiers, 5% defense overall in favor of Widows when Mind Link is active, ranged defense superiority for Soldiers, and melee defense superiority for Widows. The Soldiers also get resistance which the Widows don't, and Crabs get a self-heal.

Bane Spiders and Night Widows have a lot in common with Stalkers. Perhaps it was just an issue with powerset selection for you?

Also, I hear ya on endurance consumption. Then again, my Fortunata is running Tactical Training: Maneuvers, Tactical Training: Assault, Tactical Training: Leadership, Maneuvers, Assault, Tactics, and Indomitable Will, plus Hasten on autofire, plus near-perma Mind Link, plus spamming Psychic Scream, Psionic Tornado, and Psychic Wail every chance I get. Oh, and I often forget to turn off Super Speed in combat (after I lie in wait in the middle of the spawn with SS+Celerity, opening with Psy Wail)

Aww, I like Illusion

Granted, I had a big issue with robots until level 41...

*sigh* if only...

The only reason I have a facebook account was to find my friend's email address.
The only reason my facebook account has any information on it is because my mother wanted to list me as 'son' on her account. -_-

That's... that's just creepy. o.O

<3 Studio Foglio

I saw a box for juggling balls the other day, and I swear it looked like Phil's art style... It was almost a character out of Girl Genius.

Who's saying the game hasn't lost subscribers? That's patently false; every MMO is a battle between player attrition and new players.

The new forum software doesn't play nice with the way the Scoop used to do things. Both the Scoop and Titan Network have been working on their own off-site project similar to the Scoop, but the Scoop's version appears to have lost development progress. TN's project still has development progress, but is not complete. Neither the Scoop site nor the TN site would have been/will be the same as the old Scoop, though.

Truthfully, the main reason I know about the TN site is due to my part on the Mids' team. However, as someone who was a Scoop columnist shortly before the forum change (I only put out 5 articles for the Scoop), I'm immensely hopeful that the new site is a success. I intend to resume my Scoop column, and I hope other Scoop writers (and new writers!) will join me.

This is not a misidentification. The current live version of the game is 11T. Go through the updater, and it will update your client to the current version. Once that's done, you can skip the updater again.

I get killed trying to use Fulcrum Shift sometimes...

And... uh...

>.>
<.<

...

I've got several characters with damage buffs that require someone else die first *evil grin*

Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls

Hence, "Freem".

If I could craft up any multi-aspect IOs I wanted but ditch the set bonuses? I'd probably start creating bucketloads of Acc/Dam/End/Rech quad-aspects

Of course, there are still builds where I'd want set bonuses, but with the way multi-aspects scale for IOs, giving each enhancement every aspect you care about for the power is ridiculous... ly awesome