GavinRuneblade

The goal is to do all of the above. And don't forget your +HP also. You want 80-100% damage plus 1 or 2 procs. Obviously, hamios, and purple recipes with their much higher than usual bonuses come into play here.

Well, yes, but not at level 16 =)

Those upstanding folks who just want a gun for home defense can still afford a temp power revolver. Only a criminal has a need for a kinetic weapon.

To echo the others, what is your character?

To add what others haven't said, how often do you solo? In a team, def is often less important thanks to buffs.

Also, I go Memphis Bill's road, I aim for defense but don't often bother capping. Getting to 1 small purple off the cap is usually enough for me. I have a few exceptions, but usually that's good enough.

And in addition to Aett's point, keep in mind that a lot of AoEs are cones and PBAoEs, and being out of range of those is something you can do via positioning.

As mentioned, you're going to love carrion creepers. Just a warning, slot those babies with generic accuracy, they have multiple attacks and Set IOs work wonky in them as a result. But I found that accuracy made a world of different in mine, far more than damage for just one slot.

It will be a bit tricky. DB has fewer single-target attacks so less Kinetic combat. You can run Obliteration in your PBAoEs but that's still less S/L (1.5 compared to 3.7) and vastly less endurance reduction. The compromise is to run multistrike, but that's barely any defense at all at that point (.6 compared to 3.7)

I'm looking at this issue on my Fire/DB tank. My solution so far is to suck it up, slot the Obliteration, chew on blues and go for cardiac alpha.

Hmm, I've been in domination and dropped three sets of roots on a minion class wolf that kept on running, well, ok the damage killed him eventually, but he was never immobilized. Granted, they weren't back-to-back since he'd run off, so with enough resistance the effect might have ended so I never managed to stack it. Similarly I've seen them dance across four sets of caltrops without slowing down.

That's why people take things like Aid Self.

Lots of AV soloists use sets without a heal and make up for it with Aid Self. And not just the melee types.

there is no list because it changes. Other expensive ones are Kinetic Combat (all but the Acc/Dam) and the basilisk quad

Do they have to use the weapon or is there a gravity-control-like weaponless version?

Me, I'm still hoping for that Red Herring powerset they won't say anything about that is supposed to be the first one ever available to every Archetype (even HEATs and VEATs).

I've been told that the flying units like eagles have an aura that is part of what makes them run off to a distance to shoot rather than stay in melee and that is what breaks hide. Never had the patience to test it.

On the ambushes, there are a few different types of them. Some are keyed to a specific character, and they will come to you regardless of hidden or not. Some are keyed to a location and those you can hide from as long as you're out of line of sight until they stop moving. Then there are the ones for rescue missions. They start targeted on you, but if you get away from the hostage and stealth, they will break off, become vulnerable to stealth and just stand around. Then you can go back and slaughter them or just pick the hostage up again and keep going on your merry way.

My recommendation is try either plant/ or earth/

They get the best early safety. Earth has an AoE stun plus AoE hold, and those are very handy. Plant has confuse plus aoe hold, plus creepers.

/earth has some decent defense in the form of stuns and knocks. /Psi also and it adds the +regen from drain psyche.

Mix and match from those selections and you should have a safer experience.

Also, it is a really key thing to get recharge, accuracy and hold slotted into your single-target hold power ASAP. It is worth spending the money on IOs as low as level 15 to get a few triples in there. I like the Paralytic triple and acc/rech because I can usually buy them for 1k inf and get the salvage as a drop just by playing. Neuronic Shutdown's triple is harder to find but not impossible, and with those two triples and the acc/rech all at level 18 you have:

37.6% acc, 37.6% rech, 23.2% hold.

So two +3 So's and 1 -2 SO worth of enhancement but slotted at level 15 instead of level 22 and it will never expire on you in the middle of a mission. (also, it is less expensive than 3 so's if you're patient or lucky).

Learning to cycle the single-target hold between enemies to keep the most dangerous ones locked down is key. With that slotting you can usually trap 3 enemies as long as you need to.

The potential problem with vicky on Rom is that she becomes a source of healing from the heal nictus. And how long can she survive the AoE pulses from the damage nictus (I forget if those are autohit or not, but they are brutal either way)?

Edit: for clarity, I'm asking on both counts. I don't really know how well it would work, I'm not naysaying.

Here's the thing, Origins of Power, taken literally, says that NO PSYCHICS ARE MUTANTS. It also says that psionic characters have existed among humans since before the first mutants.

Psyche's words are that she "believes" she is not a mutant at all, and that psionics are not mutants either (both Sister's opinion, not given as fact). No mutants existed before 1938 (stated as a fact). Psionic characters exist back to the sybils of Rome and even earlier (also presented as a fact).

Given that evidence in a complete vacuum, nothing suggests that psionic characters are or should be mutants. If anything, it suggests that they should not be.

But I also like to read this bit of ambiguity as evidence of my proposal that all powersets can be any origin. At the very least Psyche doesn't agree with her own clasification as a mutant.

Going by my horrible memory, part of the range is the claim that bosses drop more often than minions.

No, not the kings, but do quite well. The hit points are so low that soloing AVs is far harder with a stalker than a brute or scrapper and the damage is lower to boot in many cases. Running against AVs down in Port Oaks would really suck and even at high level, if you barely survived with any other melee character, you would have been dead had you been on a stalker.

But outside of that, I haven't found a primary yet that CAN'T solo +1/x2/yes/no. Even spines which, really I have nothing else positive to say about. Ninja blade and dark are both awesome down very low.

I do recommend making an exemplar-based build with all your level 24 and lower powers six slotted with low-level IOs. I have one of these and it makes a world of difference.

Ah, that is a costume change. To do this you have to have the science booster pack that gives you access to the "cosmetic surgeon" found at each tailor. They give you access to not only the height slider, but even the male-female-huge selector. So you can have a little kid hulk out, or have a woman turn into a man (or the other way 'round).

But in this case, it is 100% visual, the powers will not be changed.

I don't think it is intended for 24/7 hand-holding. It's just a flag that says "hey, if I screw up don't hold it against me" and it points them at the help forum which otherwise they might miss.

And I know that I've helped a few people who asked because they saw the helper tag in a low population zone.

I should probably flag my tanker as "help me" simply because anyone who trusts my tank to (a) survive and/or (b) hold aggro, is in for a rude surprise and a team wipe. Hehehe.

There is also the PvP PBAOE set that gives 3 points of KB resist and some pieces are cheaper than eradication/obliteration.

I got 5 copies each of 4 pieces of the set (not the proc, that goes for a billion+ pretty reliably) for less than 10m each a few months back. Definitely outside the budget of this guide, but also far less than obliteration's 30-90m per piece.

IT depends. You can change the look, as mentioned with teh reference to costumes. But with a different build you cannot change your Fire/Fire blaster into a Cold/Thorn Dominator, nor into an Energy/Psi blaster. You can take different powers and in a different order, but you cannot change your Archetype, origin, primary or secondary power set.

You are free to ditch or select new power pools (have one build that flies and one with no travel power for example). And you can take different Epic and Patron pools.

While it is true that you talk to a trainer, specifically there is an option to "select or rename character build". That's what you want. Before you swap to your second build, give your current one a name. Once you have changed you cannot change back for 10 minutes, so name the build first, then swap over.

All builds start at level 1 with no powers or slots selected. You have to level up one step at a time, but do not need to regain the experience all over again.