Graviton_EU

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I want to emphasize the defensive nature of the FF set as much as possible. I have considered taking Leadership or Concealment instead of Medicine because of this.

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You'll get more survivability out of Aid Other than you will from Maneuvers or Grant Invisibility.

Do you plan to use this mainly for PvP, mainly for PvE or so that it can do a reasonable job at both?

Masterminds are godlike in PvP. I once defeated a regen scrapper while I was afk.

Over in the US, they're holding a comic creation contest. Unfortunately, the impressive prizes for that competition are only available to US residents, but I didn't let that stop me from creating one of my own.

Honor Among Thieves.

Generally repel doesn't tend to be included in "power builds", but the important thing is to create a character that you enjoy playing. Some things to consider in a Mind controller, presented in an unorganised fashion:

Mass Hypnosis can be used to sleep any mobs near the one currently being engaged, or as a way to break down the alpha strike into one that's more managable for whoever is tanking for the team.

You can stack sleep by using Hypnosis and Mesmerise, which is handy.

You have great control, with three ST controls and five AoE/cone controls. The balance is that Mind offers no damage powers like Propel from Grav (although you'll still be doing damage, just don't expect it to be spectacular).

Confusion is at its best when it's targetted on enemies that buff, debuff or control - FFGs, Madness Mages, Mortificators etc.

Telekinesis will be incredibly expensive endurance-wise, but you have Transference from kinetics which allows you to compensate.

Mesmerise is an incredibly long lasting sleep - if the enemy is not woken, they can sleep through entire battles.

You will need stamina.

I'd swap Maneuvers for Assault, then take Tactics. I acknowledge what you've said about Vengeance, but it's not really your job to be keeping people alive when you're TA/, so I'd say go for Vengeance rather than Maneuvers because the defence buff is so small so as to be useless unless stacked with other +def powers.

Yeah, not sure why you'd make a minionless mastermind with the merc/traps set, because both of them are available for Corruptors, and you'd certainly find an AR/Traps Corruptor a lot less frustrating than a minionless merc/traps, imho.

Take triage beacon, slot it and love it. Will it save a minion on red health? No.
But it's not designed to. It goes down at the start of a battle, and the regen it provides gives your minions a longer lifespan.
Regen scrappers don't leave Integration off until they're at low health, for obvious reasons. Same reasons apply to TB and RegAura from Empathy.

Mercenaries *are* good, but I think are the least talked-about MM primary. The reason for that is probably that they're generalists. A few buffs, some debuffs, some control, moderate damage - the other sets do all of these things better, but no other set does all of them.

Mercs' damage type (lethal) does of course start to get resisted more as you progress, but the Commando gets Flamethrower which helps.
They're fun all the way, though.

I'd love to get in. L33 MM, Darkroot.

Pssst. It's a game, played by people. Requiring that they when they're in a PvP zone they don't speak to each other is a little harsh. We're here to have fun, not sit in silence and press the mouse button time after time.
Nobody was stopping you doing PvP in there. I don't see the problem.

(I wasn't there, fyi.)

There's a bug with the Thugs pets not getting their costume upgrades. Apparently if you allow the animation to finish before using the upgrade power again they usually get the costume.

I'd love an Arachnos MM, and I think the idea of it being an epic unlocked through a TF/story arc is a great idea.

Of course, you're absolutely right Mesmer.
There's a far bigger powerleveling contingent in the US, and they obviously use the maxed possible sets. Those sets are unrepresentative of the archetypes as a whole and skew the data that the devs collect.
I don't know whether the devs actually play the game much. I suspect they don't play it outside of testing. The reason I think that is because they respond to issues they've picked up with data mining not by performing precision fixes, but by slapping in extremely heavy-handed nerfs across the board. They see that controllers are doing way too much damage (from fire/kin/fire), and instead of nerfing that particular power set (perhaps making the AoE epics not use containment, perhaps by limiting FS on controllers), they hit every single controller build with a hefty nerf.

Some of the reasons they've given don't make any sense. They're calling this a fix to an overseen problem, but this was flagged up very strongly by the players on the test servers in the US the moment that they added containment to the epics (which they did after testing containment on its own - making it unlikely that this was simply overlooked). Personally I think that there'll be several more sweeping nerfs like this in future issues, as part of a new 'balance vision' now we have Positron and not Statesman as the lead developer for the game.

I was going to choose Psi epic for concept reasons, but with the incredibly heavy nerfs to that particular set I don't know if I'll bother with anything other than the mez protection and the shield. Some of the pool powers are going to be more effective for damage now. Psionic Tornado, now at 0.175? I want to defeat my foes, not gently blow on their faces.

Power Thrust isn't worth slotting for damage, I have acc and knockback and use it to move troublesome foes away from me.
Might want to consider dropping health in favour of Swift, since health doesn't do much on a squishy blaster, whereas taking swift will give you a boost to movement.

Blazing Arrow is the best power in the entire set. Get it slotted up as soon as possible. If you've got stamina, I wouldn't bother slotting it for endred, I'd probably stick a range or another accuracy in there instead.

It's actually possible to play an archery blaster without stamina, although having Hasten and Acrobatics will make Stamina more desirable.

Teledroning (that is, teleporting other players into the 'guard' drones) isn't really griefing in my opinion, because it's only ever used as a tactic when one side has the other side completely locked down to their base. It can easily be prevented by backing off from the base a little.
Teleporting people into mobs is probably griefing, particularly if it happens time after time. If someone kept doing it to me, I'd petition them for it.

Generally, 1 instance of tactics and one other perception buff will see most stalkers from a reasonable distance, in my experience.

Global Name: Graviton
Server: Defiant, two Onions

Heroes:
Graviton Flux - university student affected by unforeseen consequences in experiment involving spatial distortions.
Dusk Orchid - young highschool girl uncovered her latent psychic powers after being attacked by bullies.
Comrade Commissar - a political officer from the Soviet Union shifted forward in time to the present day by a malfunctioning device under development by the Communists, who retains some scorn towards the West but recognises that times have changed.
Truefalcon - seemingly straightforward hero seeking to serve justice, but with a mysterious past.
Andromache (Union) - motivated hero with no superpowers, intelligent and resourceful
Unit Omega-12 (Union)- android hero with no memory of how he came to be.

Villains:
Darkroot - owner of Root Industries, a megacorp which maintains some degree of respectability but which secretly develops technology for various villain groups.
Neuronoid - scientifically created vampire-like human.
Electron Overload - infused with the essence of a fallen Longbow Warden by Root Industries, Electron Overload is one of the biggest and toughest enforcers for the corporation.

Type of RP: any.
Contact: in-game @Graviton, forums and MSN.
Times on: afternoons, evenings and nights, most days.
Timezone: BST.

I'll be joining you at 11pm tonight.

You're never going to be able to take damage as a defender. Acrobatics is useful to avoid knockbacks, but your focus otherwise should be on using Radiation Emmission to avoid taking it in the first place.

No wormhole? It's an exceptional power, imho. AoE stun, plus relocation of the foes to where you choose, and it combines with crushing field to be an AoE pseudo-hold.
Crush cycles fairly quickly, so I'd be tempted to drop a recharge and stick in another immob. Also, I'd always say that you should 3 slot your hold with hold durations - it makes control a *lot* easier if foes are being held for longer. Also, 3 slots in health is a bit pointless for a squishy, particularly for a controller - you should spend them in other powers that prevent the damage being dealt in the first place, perhaps in your singularity, which you will surely want to marry. Similarly, I don't know the exact figures but I suspect that the extra slot in swift isn't doing much, and might be better instead with an additional endrdx in EF, which is very endurance-heavy.
I've found that radiant aura cycles extremely quickly with only one recredux, but there might be something in having two. I think that having three will be a bit of a waste though, because it's such a fast recharge at its base anyway.

I mentioned health earlier, and in fact you could even skip it, get hurdle at 24 and at 30 go instead for lift, which is a form of very light control in itself, since when they're up in the air they can't attack you.

Is this a PvP build? If so, I can understand some of your choices which otherwise I've disagreed with above - wormhole's not great in PvP, and those recharges will help to stack holds to overcome resistance, but if it *is* PvP you might want to consider slotting LR with some slows, using the slots gained by not slotting health or by skipping it altogether.

Just my opinions, based on my grav/rad and my playstyle.

I'll be happy to join the hunt.

I've got one character - Dusk Orchid - that's a female. I've had no questions or been in any awkward situations.

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i have a little grav/kin troller too, (just lvl 16), amd i've got leaping to get acro, so i'll prolly skip Inertial reduction cause i already have SJ

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IR is a very nice team buff, so even if you have SJ it's good; plus it has better air control than SJ.
Anyone know if IR stacks with SJ, and if so what's it like?

Who's that guy in the blue? One of the new Korean heroes, I presume. Anyone have any information on him? He looks neat.